Techno-economic Modelling Analysis Of
Microalgae Cultivation For Biofuels And
Co-products
Author(s)
F. Madugu & M. Collu
Abstract
The goal of microalgae for biofuels is not only to replace fossil fuel in quantity
but also for the cost to be at parity with the existing fuel stock. Adopting this
evolving technology would not only require a combination of technical and
economic assessment, but also the confidence of key stakeholders. The main
challenge is that there are multiple pathways and logistics related to the entire
algal biofuel production chain, and each stage is subject to technical, economic,
environmental and policy issues, making it difficult to determine the optimum
option. Therefore there is a need for a holistic decision-making tool, which
provides a clear choice of direction to all stakeholders. The study initially
adopted a multi criteria decision-making approach called TOPSIS, using a case
study of five alternatives of algal processes to produce either oil for transport or
biogas for electricity generation via a wastewater treatment method. The TOPSIS
technique is used to identify the most acceptable alternative that has the
maximum distance from the negative ideal and the minimum distance from the
positive ideal solution. The result shows the alternative 1 and 2 as the preferred
ideal solution among the others. Because the method ranks alternatives according
to attributes, it limits the technique to a more defined process and therefore it
cannot provide an understanding of feedback effects such as policy, resource
availability in a region, and possible scale-up issues affecting the process. These
limitations make the TOPSIS a less powerful technique for assessing the overall
microalgae supply chain. However it is feasible to adopt the TOPSIS approach
and integrate it into a flexible Techno-Economic (TE) model to make a decision
over defined processes.
Keywords: biofuels, techno economic modelling analysis, MCDM, co-products.
Keywords
biofuels, techno economic modelling analysis, MCDM, co-products.
Related Book
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