Abstract:
The economic viability for a microalgae production facility for the production of algal
oil and bioproducts remains challenging and unanswered. Important aspects not
investigated in assessment of the economic viability of algal oil are the social benefits,
such as employment, local earnings and outputs created from such facilities. A model
that is able to include both techno-economic and social benefits can help provide
answers on the future of these technologies. The development of this type of model
requires a combination of techno-economic and social impact theory. This thesis
presents an integrated model that estimates the social (employment earnings, and
output) and techno-economic impacts generated from a microalgae production facility.
A process and system configuration of the algal production chain is selected first. The
construction costs of the equipment are then calculated, followed by overall capital cost
calculation. Then, the operating costs are estimated by multiplying the resources and
energy usage rate by a unit price. Employment, earnings, and output generated from
constructing and operating the facility is then calculated using output from the capital
and operating cost with input – output multipliers to measure the impact of the series of
effects generated by expenditure. The model as far as the author knows, is the first
techno-economic model that addresses the social impact. A parametric analysis is
carried out using two different methods to determine the viability of an algal oil
production facility. Taking the economic costs and the operating parameters from the
socio- techno-economic model, some key parameters are changed across a range of
values, and their influence on the final cost of algal oil and job impact are analysed. The
results shows highest cost contributor to the algal oil cost comes from capital costs.
Productivity rate and lipid content have the highest impact both on the final algal oil
costs, and the social impact outputs. Improvement would need to be made both in
biology and system units.
