Recent nanoparticle engineering advances in microalgal cultivation and harvesting processes of biodiesel production: A review

• Efficiency and cost of algal cultivation and harvest processes are key issues.
• Nanoparticle engineering has been extensively applied as a practical tool.
• Recent achievements using nanoparticle engineering are presented and discussed.

Among the various steps entailed in the production of biodiesel from microalgae, the efficiency and cost-reduction of the cultivation and harvesting steps remain key obstacles to its practical commercialization. Recently, in order to overcome the technical bottlenecks and limitations with regard to both steps, nanoparticle engineering based on particles’ unique physico-chemical and mechanical properties has been extensively applied as a powerful analytical and practical tool. These applications include the enhancement of cell growth and/or pigments by light back-scattering, the induction of intracellular lipid accumulation by nutritional competition and/or stress environment, the improvement of cell separation efficiency and processing time from culture broth, the multiple reuse of magnetic nanoparticle flocculant, and integrated one-pot harvesting/cell-disruption. This review presents and discusses the recent nanoparticle-engineering-based developments in the implementation of practical microalgal cultivation and harvesting processes.