There are many constraints in commercialization of bioethanol production from brown algae.
Large-scale and cost-effective production of brown algae biomass is one of those hurdles in commercial bioethanol production.
The current floating cultivation and non-automatic harvesting technology are not appropriate in terms of economics.
At present, brown algae are harvested only for one to three months per year in a restricted area, and thus it is difficult to
have large amount of brown algae biomass at low price.
In order to make brown algae-derived bioethanol in a practical scale, the development of mass production technology of brown algae biomass at low cost is absolutely required.
Development of yearround multiple cultivation technology of brown algae can be a solution for cost-effective production of brown algae biomass.
Recently, Song et al. suggested that the annual production of brown algae can be enhanced by combining the species.
They reported that species combination could enhance annual productivity of brown algae by 2e4 times.
In South Korea, a research program has been conducting on the mass cultivation of brown algae and the production of biofuel from the brown algae since 2008.
They plan to demonstrate the brown algae biomass production with 50e60 ton (dry wt)/ha/yr productivity in offshore farms.
Cost-effective production of brown algae biomass will be a key success factor for commercialization, together with the development of robust microbial cell factories.