Life Cycle Analysis of the Production of Biodiesel from Microalgae

In recent years, there has been growing interest in third-generation biofuels, i.e., fuels from algal biomass. Considering microalgae, the production and transformation processes are currently under study by researchers across the world, as microalgae appear to be a promising alternative to meet our sustainability goals in the energy sector. Considering the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) applied to biofuels from microalgae, a number of studies have been published to date, covering a wide geographical range and analyzing several process configurations. This chapter presents the microalgae-to-biofuel process and a reviewof the publishedLCAstudies in the field. The findings show that the majority of these studies do not have access to primary data but only to secondary data sources. Most studies do not consider the whole process, but only some of the process stages, thus limiting the relevance of the results to the specific context to which they refer. Only about half of the studies reviewed consider the impacts of water and land use, and only two present a detailed analysis of the economic and social impacts. For this reason, further efforts are still necessary in order to obtain a comprehensive sustainability assessment of this potential solution to the energy problem.