Amita Jacob, Ao Xia, Daryl Gunning, Gavin Burnell, and Jerry D. Murphy
Abstract—Aquaculture contributed 23.8 million tonnes of
aquatic algae globally in 2012. Increasing consumption of
seaweed (as food, for the production of hydro-colloids, and for
production of third generation biofuels) will lead to an upward
trend in its production and cultivation. Aquaculture contributed
66.6 million tonnes of fish in 2012, 42 % of global production.
Fish demand globally is rising to meet food and nutritional
requirements; aquaculture for fish will grow. However fish
farms are marred by criticism of pollution caused by discharge
of waste. Integrated multi-trophic aquaculture can reduce
pollution through co-culture of several species such as seaweed
and mussels that utilise waste disposed from fish farms for their
growth and development.
A model is investigated which would provide 1.25% of energy
in transport in the EU from seaweed. This would involve annual
production of 168Mt of seaweed (in excess of present world
harvest) integrated with 13Mt of farmed salmon. Themodel
proposes 2603 anaerobic digesters, each treating 64,500 t/a of
Saccharinalatissima in coastal digesters adjacent to natural gas
infrastructure for downstream use in natural gas vehicles.
Index Terms—Bio-methane, gaseous biofuel, hydro-colloids,
integrated multi-trophic aquaculture, seaweed.
Amita Jacob and Ao Xia are with the Environmental Research Institute,
University College Cork, Ireland (e-mail: amitajacob13@gmail.com,
ao.xia@ucc.ie).
Daryl Gunning and Gavin Burnell are with the School of Biological,
Earth and Environmental Sciences, University College Cork, Ireland (e-mail:
daryl.gunning@gmail.com, g.burnell@ucc.ie).
Jerry D. Murphy is with the Environmental Research Institute and the
School of Engineering, University College Cork, Ireland (e-mail:
jerry.murphy@ucc.ie).
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Cite: Amita Jacob, Ao Xia, Daryl Gunning, Gavin Burnell, and Jerry D. Murphy, "Seaweed Biofuel Derived from Integrated Multi-trophic Aquaculture," International Journal of Environmental Science and Development vol. 7, no. 11, pp. 805-809, 2016.