Isolation and Characterization of microalgae strains for biofuel production

The world is facing declining liquid fuel reserves at a time when energy demand is exploding. The need of energy is increasing continuously due to the increase in population size and industrialization. The continued use of petroleum sourced fuels is now widely recognized as unsustainable because of the depletion supplies and the contribution of these fuels to the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the environment leading to increase of global warming. As supply dwindles and costs rise, nations will be forced to utilize alternative energy sources e.g. natural gas, coal, hydroelectrical and nuclear. In order to achieve a secure and stable energy supply that does not cause environmental damage, renewable energy sources must be explored and promising technologies needs to be developed with the passage of time. Biofuel derived from microalgae has the potential for high volume and cost effective production. It can be carbon neutral and produced intensively on relatively small areas of marginal land. The quality of the fuel product is comparable to petroleum diesel and can be incorporated with minimal change into the existing fuel infrastructure. The use of microalgae as a potential feedstock source for biofuel production offers many global environmental and socio-economic advantages, namely faster growth rates, high biomass and lipid production. In the past decades, wide-scale screening of naturally occurring algal strains have been done all over the world. However in Saudi Arabia, very few investigations could be available at present relating to the algae-based biofuel production, especially relating to the screening of high yielding oleic strains. This study is therefore will be focussed on the isolation, screening and molecular characterization of potential microalgae strains for biofuel production from different places of Saudi Arabia.