1. Introduction
Conversion of various biomass to cost-effective biofuels has
been considered as a potential solution to replace current use of
fossil fuels as fossil fuels become scarce and more expensive [1].
The first-generation feedstock using food crops brought serious
competition between food and biofuel [1]. The second-generation
biofuel using lignocellulosic biomass can avoid the competition
between food and biofuel, but is limited by the high cost associated
with pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass for removal of lignin
[2].
Microalgae is a very promising source for biofuel by using efficient
photosynthesis for fixation of CO2. Compared to terrestrial
plants, microalgae show faster growth rate, with high efficiency
(above 10%) exceeding that of terrestrial plants by a factor of 10–
50 [3]. Under unfavorable environmental conditions and in marginal
land, microalgae can grow and produce large amounts of
lipid, which is used for biodiesel production [4]. In addition,
microalgae can use various water sources while recycling nutrients
from wastewater streams [5]. Thus, microalgae has distinct advantages
such as non-competition with food crops over limited land,
high biomass productivity, and high lipid content compared with
the feedstock for first and second generation biofuels. In fact, areal
productivity of algal biomass is much higher than first and second
feedstocks and they also have high lipid content and growth rate
[3]. They also require a smaller amount of water and land than first
and second feedstocks for biofuels [6]. The possible biofuels from
microalgae include biodiesel made from algal lipid content,
methane by anaerobic digestion, and bioethanol from algal carbohydrates
[7,8]. The remaining biomass can be used as a feed for
animals and fish, and it can be used as the materials in bioplastics
[9,10].
However, commercial application of microalgal biofuel has
been limited by its high operating costs associated with costs for
substrate/nutrients, low productivity of algal biomass, and high
energy consumption during algal cell harvest. For producing a
microalgae biomass, the suspended systems include open and
closed types. The open type culture systems like a raceway pond
has several disadvantages due to contamination and evaporation
problems. Also, it needs large surface area for photosynthesis.
Closed bioreactors are not suitable for biofuel production since
their operation costs are expensive. No matter what open or closed
system, suspended systems consume massive costs for harvesting
microalgae cells. Compared with suspended systems, biofilm reactors
showed higher algal biomass productivity and easy harvest of
algal biomass by scrapping [11].
Besides, algal biofuel production could be integrated with
wastewater treatment to lower the overall costs. The Department
of Energy’s report showed that wastewater treatment should be
coupled with the development of microalgae biofuel technologies
for economical biofuel production [6]. Current wastewater effluent
has high concentration of nitrogen and phosphate which often
causes eutrophication and various harmful effects on ecosystems
while changing the pH, decreasing dissolved oxygen and causing
death of aquatic organisms. While elimination of these nutrient
requires a huge amount chemicals and energy [12], adopting
microalgae for wastewater treatment can solve the eutrophication
problem and treat the water without toxic compounds. Furthermore,
wastewater can be nutrients for microalgae to increase
microalgae biomass with wastewater treatment. Therefore, research combining microalgae production and wastewater treatment
has received increasing attention [11].
Recently, several studies revealed that the biofilm reactors surpassed
the suspended reactors in regard to biomass productivity
and wastewater treatment efficiency [13–15]. Current studies to
develop algal biofilm reactors have included the use of secondary
effluent from municipal and agricultural wastewater in various
types of bioreactors and substrates [16–18]. Particularly the agricultural
wastewater treatment by microalgae sometimes required
dilution before treatment since it has high COD, nutrients, turbidity
and dark color. Biomass productivity and total biomass are closely
related to surface area, reactor design and supports. The porosity
and roughness of supporting material can increase the surface area
leading to high biomass productivity and wastewater treatment
ability. Therefore, this review deals with limitations of current
algal biofuel production, and summarizes various biofilm reactors
integrated with wastewater treatment as viable solutions to overcome
these limitations. Various types of current algal biofilm reactors
and support material used for current algal biofilm reactors
are comparatively investigated. In addition, algal biomass production
combined with treatment of municipal and agricultural
wastewater is als