Introduction (cont)

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National Renewable Energy Laboratory

reviewed at the end of that section. The conclusion from these extensive outdoor mass culture

studies was that the use of microalgae for the low-cost production of biodiesel is technically

feasible, but still requires considerable long-term R&D to achieve the high productivities required.

Section III.B. reviews the resource assessments for water, land, CO2, etc., carried out by the ASP,

primarily for the southwestern United States. These studies demonstrated the potential availability

of large brackish and saline water resources suitable for microalgae mass cultures, as well as large

land and CO2 resources. They suggest that the potential production of microalgae-derived

biodiesel may represent more than 10% of U.S. transportation fuels, although full resource

exploitation would be significantly constrained in practice. Several engineering and economic

cost analyses were also supported by DOE and the ASP, and these are reviewed in Section III.C.,

including recent work by the ASP and DOE on power plant flue gas utilization for greenhouse

gas (CO2) mitigation.

The overall conclusion of these studies was that in principle and practice large-scale microalgae

production is not limited by design, engineering, or net energy considerations and could be

economically competitive with other renewable energy sources. However, long-term R&D would

be required to actually achieve the very high productivities and other assumptions made in such

cost analyses. Section III.D. provides recommendations for future research that could make this

technology commercially feasible.

A Look Back at the Aquatic Species Program--Technical Review