Ramandani, A. A., Lee, S. Y., Jambrak, A. R., Chen, W.-H., Lim, J. W., & Khoo, K. S. (2025). Synergizing food waste management and microalgae biorefinery for bioenergy production: Recent advance on direct and indirect conversion pathways. Process Biochemistry, 151, 14–26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procbio.2025.01.006
Abstract:
Food waste is a persistent global environmental issue that contributes to global warming and climate change by releasing significant amounts of greenhouse gases as it decomposes in landfills. Converting food waste into bioenergy could serve as a sustainable solution. Direct conversion of food waste through methods like anaerobic digestion, fermentation, and pyrolysis, produces diverse energy products, while an indirect approach involves cultivating microalgae using food waste as an economical nutrient source. Microalgae are particularly advantageous due to their adaptability to grow on waste substrates, high lipid production potential, and ability to recycle nutrients efficiently. The resulting biomass can be transformed into biofuels, offering a dual benefit of waste management and energy production. This review work provides a holistic review of food waste-to-energy conversion methods, both direct and indirect, evaluating their feasibility and benefits. Specifically, a comprehensive analysis of using microalgae grown on food waste for biofuel production is provided, offering insights into how the method could effectively address both environmental and energy crises, and contribute to sustainable development goals. Future research should focus on enhancing conversion process efficiency, optimizing microalgae bioprocess, and scaling-up these technologies to industrial levels, while addressing challenges such as economic feasibility, supportive policies, and robust supply chains. Collaboration among industry, academia, and government is essential to boost the global implementation of these technologies.
License type:
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Funding Info:
This work was supported by the National Science and Technology Council, Taiwan (Project no. NSTC112-2222-E-155-005) and the Department of Chemical Engineering and Material Science, Yuan Ze University, Taiwan, under New Faculty Research Start-Up Fund Scheme (Project no: 303014-1 and 303014-2). The author would also like to acknowledge the support provided by Research and Development (RD) Office, Yuan Ze University, Taiwan, under Assistant Teacher Research Scheme (Project no: 113-HRD-07). We would also like to acknowledge that each of the icon creator(s) used in the figures in this work has been designed using images from Flaticon.com (www.flaticon.com).