ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the development of magnetic harvesting of microalgae biomass, its challenges, and advancement. Microalgae biomass has received intensive research attention as the most promising bio-feedstock for renewable and sustainable biofuel production. Microalgae biomass harvesting faces major concerns like dilute nature of culture broth and smaller size of cells, which make it difficult to harvest through the general filtration approach. Recently, various kinds of magnetic material and their composites have been explored for the separation of microalgae biomass from its culture. Lately, magnetic materials have received extensive consideration and encouraged researchers in their efforts for harvesting of microalgae biomass. Harvesting of microalgae biomass, based on the interaction between magnetic materials and microalgae cells, is considerably influenced by several aspects such as characteristics of magnetic particles, microalgae cells, physiochemical parameters, harvesting conditions, etc. Likewise, it has been used as a more energy- and time-efficient process in the magnetic harvesting of microalgae biomass.
