ABSTRACT
Crude oils have been primary sources of energy and fuels, such as petrodiesel. However, significant public concerns about the sustainability, price fluctuations, and adverse environmental impact of crude oils have emerged since the 1970s. Thus, biooils and biooil-based biodiesel fuels have emerged as alternatives to crude oils and crude oil-based petrodiesel fuels, respectively, in recent decades. Nowadays, although petrodiesel fuels are still used extensively, biodiesel fuels are being used increasingly in the transportation and power sectors. Therefore, there has been great public interest in the development of algal biodiesel fuels as the fourth generation of biodiesel fuels. However, it is necessary to reduce the total cost of biodiesel production by reducing the feedstock cost through the improvement of lipid productivity of algal biomass. Furthermore, for the efficient progression of the research in this field, it is necessary to develop efficient incentive structures for the primary stakeholders and to inform these stakeholders about the research. Although there have been a number of reviews and book chapters in this field, there has been no review of the 25-most-cited articles. Thus, this chapter reviews these articles by highlighting the key findings of these most-prolific studies on algal lipid production for algal biodiesel production. Then, it discusses these key findings.
