APPROACHES TO THE INTENSIVE CULTIVATION MICROALGAE AS RAW MATERIAL SOURCE FOR OBTAINING HIGH VALUE ADDED PRODUCTS AND CO 2 SEQUESTRATION

Abstract

The current situation due to the exhaustion of fossil fuels, increasing oil prices and environmental difficulties, urgent demand for alternative sources of energy, be an option promising the biodiesel: biofuel produced primarily from oils from oleaginous plants, the availability of which unfortunately , is incapable of replacing the petrodiesel market. The use of microalgae for biodiesel production is an advantageous alternative due to the high lipid content and ideal profile for obtaining biofuels they offer. In addition to this, other attributes are its high microalgae photosynthetic efficiency, which make them excellent sequestering of CO2, its ability to grow both in marine waters, sweet and salty waste, and its relatively high growth rate. However, microalgae culture systems currently have some limitations such as: insufficient information for scaling, difficulty maintaining  monocultures, high operating costs for the production and harvesting of microalgae biomass, etc. Given these inconveniences, optimizing their culture systems is essential. The purpose of this paper is to design a research strategy that provides a critical overview of this alternative and bioenergetics, by analyzing the fundamentals of it.