地域特性を考慮した微細藻類由来バイオ燃料生産システムの性能評価

摘要

Recently, the microalgae that can produce fats and hydrocarbons attracts a lot of attention as means to solve the issue of global warming. The purposes of this study are to design microalgae-based biodiesel fuel (BDF) production system using exhaust gas from thermal power plants and considering regional character­istics, and to analysis potential of the microalgae from the viewpoint of energy balance, CO2 balance and fuel production cost. The system consists of five components: Culture, harvesting, extraction, transportation, conversion. In addition, the methodology of this study has three processes: Allocating microalgae culture plants and BDF production plants, optimizing transportation using Geographic Information System (GIS) with Network Analyst, and evaluating energy balance and CO_2 reduction of the system. Besides, to minimize BDF production cost, we change the number of BDF production plants and consider trade-off between trans­portation cost and BDF production plants costs. The result shows that microalgae-based BDF production system has high potential for CO_2 reduction and the possibility to competitive with the fossil fuel cost.%近年，化石燃料の代替や地球温暖化防止を目的に，世界中でバイオ燃料の生産が進められている。そのような状況の中，新たなバイオ燃料資源として，微細藻類が注目されている。微細藻類とは，水中で単細胞や群体として存在し，酸素発生型の光合成を行う生物の総称であるが，これらの中にはCO_2と栄養塩を原料に，光合成によって細胞内に炭化水素を産生する種類が存在する。