The analysis on performance of microalgae-based biofuel production system considering regional climate condition and transportation

Recently, the microalgae that can produce fats and hydrocarbons attracts a lot of attention as means to solve the issue of global warming. The purposes of this study are to design microalgae-based biodiesel fuel (BDF) production system using exhaust gas from thermal power plants and considering regional characteristics, and to analysis potential of the microalgae from the viewpoint of energy balance, CO₂ balance and fuel production cost. The system consists of five components: Culture, harvesting, extraction, transportation, conversion. In addition, the methodology of this study has three processes: Allocating microalgae culture plants and BDF production plants, optimizing transportation using Geographic Information System (GIS) with Network Analyst, and evaluating energy balance and CO₂ reduction of the system. Besides, to minimize BDF production cost, we change the number of BDF production plants and consider trade-off between transportation cost and BDF production plants costs. The result shows that microalgae-based BDF production system has high potential for CO₂ reduction and the possibility to competitive with the fossil fuel cost.