Materials flow modeling of nutrient recycling in biodiesel production from microalgae

Biodiesel production based on microalgae as feedstock is associated with a high demand of nutrients, respectively nitrogen and phosphorus. The production of 1 l biodiesel requires between 0.23 and 1.55 kg nitrogen and 29–145 g of phosphorus depending of the cultivation conditions for microalgae. The supply of nutrients can be expected to severely limit the extent to which the production of biofuels from microalgae can be sustainably expanded. The nutrient demand can be reduced if the nutrients in the residual algae biomass after oil extraction are reused for algae cultivation. This modeling work illustrates that for the investigated process chains and scenarios the nutrient recycling rates are in the range from 30% to 90% for nitrogen and from 48% to 93% for phosphorus. The highest recycling values can be achieved by hydrothermal gasification of the oil-free residues.