Renewable energy technologies continue to expand and received a lot of attention, particularly biofuels production from microalgae biomass. Biofuels from microalgae biomass have the potential to replace fossil fuel for power generation while mitigating CO2 emission from atmosphere. It is proven that chemical compositions of microalgae fuels are similar to petrol and diesel thus can be used to replace fossil fuels for transportation. In addition, microalgae have high growth rates and lipid content which make them a feasible choice for CO2 fixation and biodiesel production.
Although microalgae have high potential to produce biofuels and replace fossil in power generation, challenges to commercialize the production at large scale need to be addressed. The challenges are such as: (a) the demand for biofuels is not high in viewing low market price of fossil fuel; (b) the cost for the biofuels production from microalgae is high; and (c) the energy ratio of above unity needs to be achieved. Low cost with high efficient and low contamination harvesting techniques are another obstacles faced by the current stages of microalgae cultivation. This problem can be solved by introducing natural flocculants, which is biodegradable with lower cost than mineral floccurants. Extracting the oil from the dried microalgae is another challenge; even though the microalgae are recognized of high lipid contents, but oil extraction is not as anticipated.
Thus, biofuels production from microalgae biomass is considered expensive and the returns of investment are quiet slow and low. However, with the improvement of advanced technologies and possible government incentives it is hoped that microalgae biofuels will soon become economic feasible and comparable to fossil fuels in term of cost of production.