Summer school

Microalgae Biorefinery (4 days)

Advanced course, 2nd edition, designing optimal microalgae-based biorefineries, from unit operations to the entire process chain, for both research and commercial applications and to be able to address the present bottlenecks in the process chain.

Organised by Food Technology Agrobiotechnology Nutrition and Health Sciences (VLAG), Bio Process Engineering
Date

Mon 28 August 2017 until Thu 31 August 2017

Course introduction

Microalgae are considered a biobased feedstock for a variety of applications: Food, feed, chemicals, materials and energy. The advantages of this feedstock is its flexibility in terms of products and sustainability: high areal productivity in comparison to terrestrial crops, lack of competition for land that is suitable for agriculture, and their capacity to grow on seawater. To make microalgae a source of bulk products, the cost price for production needs to be reduced, the scale of production needs to be increased significantly and the biomass value should be maximized.

To develop a more sustainable and economically feasible process, all biomass components (e.g. proteins, lipids, carbohydrates) should be used at minimal energy requirements and minimal costs while keeping the functionality of the different biomass components. Biorefining of microalgae is very important for the selective separation and use of the functional biomass components.

- Unfortunately, your cookie settings do not allow videos to be displayed. - check your settings

What you will learn

This course provides the essential skills for designing optimal microalgae-based biorefineries, from unit operations to the entire process chain, for both research and commercial applications and to be able to address the present bottlenecks in the process chain. In addition several speakers from industry will highlight the industrial/economic framework of microalgae biorefinery.

In the course Microalgae Process Design: from cells to photobioreactors (5th Edition, 28 - 31 August, Wageningen) the upstream part, i.e. the biology and cultivation part is covered.

Meet the lecturers

Other faculty

Dr Ben van den Broek - Food and Biobased Research, Wageningen UR
Dr Carl Safi - Food and Biobased Research, Wageningen UR
Dr Dorinde Kleinegris - Food and Biobased Research, Wageningen UR
Dr Carlos Unamunzaga, Fitoplancton, Cadiz, Spain
Dr Philippe Willems, Value or Technology, Belgium
Dr Reza Ranjbar, AlgaeBiotech S.L., The Netherlands

Course design

Through lectures, digital cases and short practicals, the participants will learn: 1) to describe different process units for each process step in the microalgae biorefinery chain; 2) to evaluate and optimize the process units by setting up mass/energy balances for each unit; 3) to integrate the different process units in a process chain and to 4) integrate the acquired knowledge into optimal process chains for different business cases with different combinations of end products.

Requirements

An MSc level in (bio)process technology, or alike, is recommended.

Back to Wageningen Summer School