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Critical Review of Microalgae LCA Studies for Bioenergy Production

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Abstract

The cultivation of microalgae gained high attention within the last years because of their potential to substitute conventional bioenergy crops. To evaluate algal bioenergy production pathways already at an early stage, several life cycle assessment (LCA) studies have been performed, but their results and conclusions vary drastically. Against this background, this review gives a comparative analysis of 16 recent studies. To allow for a comparison, a meta-approach served to uniform the considered systems. System boundaries have been equalized and the energy return on investment (EROI) has been calculated for each study. Depending on the assumptions made on biomass productivity, lipid content, required energy, and the output of the system, the energetic performance was assessed. Large variations from 0.01 to 3.35 for the EROI could be derived.

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Notes

  1. More information on the CED values used in this analysis can be found in the supplementary information.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support by the project EnAlgae, a Strategic Initiative of the INTERREG IVB NWE Programme.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis, P.O. Box 3640, 76021, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Franziska Ketzer, Johannes Skarka & Christine Rösch

Authors
  1. Franziska Ketzer
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  2. Johannes Skarka
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  3. Christine Rösch
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Franziska Ketzer.

Additional information

Highlights

• System boundaries and processes were adapted in a meta-analysis

• Comparison of energy return on investment (EROI) was enabled

• Differences of results from 16 microalgal LCA studies, focusing on bioenergy, were identified

• Explanations for varying energy inputs and outputs were given and discussed

• Bottlenecks in algae-to-energy systems are summarized

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Ketzer, F., Skarka, J. & Rösch, C. Critical Review of Microalgae LCA Studies for Bioenergy Production. Bioenerg. Res. 11, 95–105 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12155-017-9880-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12155-017-9880-1

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