Techno-economic modeling for biofuels from microalgae

Abstract

Techno-economic modeling is a valuable and widely used process for guiding research and development efforts in order to achieve an economically viable outcome. In the case of algal biofuels, techno-economic modeling can be used and to provide important information on the best path to commercialization and to provide an estimate of the cost of biofuel production. These models integrate complex technical and economic information for a given process or processes. Techno-economic modeling can be used the evaluate and compare alternate processes, to help in defining the project scale and scope for economic value, measure uncertainty of project technical and financial risks, for the assessment of the sensitivity to changes in prices/efficiencies on project worth, for the economic evaluation of project worth, and for the calculation of expected returns and risks to capital investment. This chapter introduces and describes the process of techno-economic modeling and how the findings of this modeling can be used. Some of the key findings of the many models which have been published to date and their limitations are considered within the context of how the cost of production of biofuels from microalgae can be reduced.