ABSTRACT
Marine microalgae are currently considered to be one of the most promising alternative sources for biodiesel (Sheehan et al. 1998). Since many microalgal strains can be cultivated on nonarable land in a saline water medium, their mass farming does not place additional strains on food production (Widjaja et al. 2009). Their high photosynthetic rates, often ascribed to their simplistic unicellular structures, enable microalgae not only to serve as an effective carbon sequestration platform but also to rapidly accumulate lipids in their biomass (up to 77% of dry cell mass). Even using a conservative scenario, microalgae are still predicted to produce about 10 times more biodiesel per unit area of land than a typical terrestrial oleaginous crop (Sheehan et al. 1998; Chisti 2007; Rosenberg et al. 2008; Schenk et al. 2008).
