Production of microalgae-based biodiesel in Indonesia: Comparative study of microalgal oil extraction technologies

The process of biodiesel production from microalgae consists of cultivation, harvesting, oil extraction and biodiesel conversion. There are a variety of oil extraction from microalgae technologies and microalgal oil conversion to biodiesel technologies. This study aims to evaluate the algal oil extraction technology and the conversion technology into biodiesel from microalgae, which can be used to help in decision making of the most appropriate technology used in Indonesia. There are three stages before determining the selection of algal based biodiesel production technology, namely: 1) study of literature; 2) study and discussion with stakeholders; and 3) assessment by Less Objective Criteria (LOC) method. Factors to be considered in the LOC assessment are energy requirements, technological maturity, impact on the environment, and convenience of scale up. The result shows that the proposed microalgal oil extraction technology to be applied in production of biodiesel in Indonesia today is conventional extraction. Among the choices of biodiesel production technology that have a very close point total to each other, the technological capability in supporting scale up of the plant capacity becomes an important factor for future consideration.