Microalgas, cultivo y beneficios

Abstract

Microalgae have a phycoremediation capacity through the removal or biotransformation of pollutants from a liquid or gaseous medium. These pollutants are captured by the growing algal biomass allowing them to be recovered through harvest. This capability results in a culture system with two purposes: removal of contaminants and biomass production for commercial uses. Both goals depend on the cultivation system, cultivated species and environmental factors. The use of contaminated media in culture impacts directly on production cost. Selecting the type of culture system is important and should be done based on biological, technical, environmental and economic criteria previously settled. Between several techniques differentiated in both efficiency and complexity, the algal biomass harvest is the most complex and expensive process in microalgae cultivation. Biomass production from microalgae has provided a wide range of biotechnological products, uses in the food industry, health and medicine, animal feed, organic compounds and biofuels production. All this is of great importance due to global environmental issues that exist today. This paper makes a summary and reviews the latest information (from 1972 to 2014) on different aspects and parameters of relevance for microalgae cultivation, its many uses and benefits.