Elsevier

Biotechnology Advances

Volume 54, January–February 2022, 107819
Biotechnology Advances

Research review paper
How does the Internet of Things (IoT) help in microalgae biorefinery?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biotechadv.2021.107819Get rights and content

Highlights

  • IoT helps real-time monitoring of microalgae biorefinery process parameters.

  • IoT assists in sufficient data collection to make smart prediction and decision.

  • IoT promotes automation in microalgae biorefinery.

  • IoT guides microalgal biorefinery towards low-cost and high efficiency.

Abstract

Microalgae biorefinery is a platform for the conversion of microalgal biomass into a variety of value-added products, such as biofuels, bio-based chemicals, biomaterials, and bioactive substances. Commercialization and industrialization of microalgae biorefinery heavily rely on the capability and efficiency of large-scale cultivation of microalgae. Thus, there is an urgent need for novel technologies that can be used to monitor, automatically control, and precisely predict microalgae production. In light of this, innovative applications of the Internet of things (IoT) technologies in microalgae biorefinery have attracted tremendous research efforts. IoT has potential applications in a microalgae biorefinery for the automatic control of microalgae cultivation, monitoring and manipulation of microalgal cultivation parameters, optimization of microalgae productivity, identification of toxic algae species, screening of target microalgae species, classification of microalgae species, and viability detection of microalgal cells. In this critical review, cutting-edge IoT technologies that could be adopted to microalgae biorefinery in the upstream and downstream processing are described comprehensively. The current advances of the integration of IoT with microalgae biorefinery are presented. What this review discussed includes automation, sensors, lab-on-chip, and machine learning, which are the main constituent elements and advanced technologies of IoT. Specifically, future research directions are discussed with special emphasis on the development of sensors, the application of microfluidic technology, robotized microalgae, high-throughput platforms, deep learning, and other innovative techniques. This review could contribute greatly to the novelty and relevance in the field of IoT-based microalgae biorefinery to develop smarter, safer, cleaner, greener, and economically efficient techniques for exhaustive energy recovery during the biorefinery process.

Introduction

At present, emerging Internet of Things (IoT) technology, known as the third wave of the world information industry after computers and the Internet, has slowly conquered the past social lifestyle (Perwej et al., 2019). For a more intuitive understanding of the IoT, a simple analogy would be to compare IoT with the human body; sensors are equivalent to the five senses, the networking is similar to the nervous system used to transfer information, and the human brain classifies and processes the information after receiving it (Buiu et al., 2017; Mohamed, 2019; Tian et al., 2019). IoT combines various information sensing devices with the Internet to form a ubiquitous huge network, which can realize the interconnection of people, machines, and things at any time and any place. Through different protocol domains and applications, all things are connected and collected, and all information interacts (Sethi and Sarangi, 2017). Many countries are very keen on in-depth IoT research. In 2018, the number of IoT devices in the world was 27 billion and this number is growing to 75 billion by 2025 according to Statista (Pillai, 2018). With the continuous revolution in industrial practices, various upgraded versions, such as Industry 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0, were perceived and attained. At present, the more promising Industry 4.0 is being promoted with gradual automation of all areas, in which IoT technology plays a vital role. IoT technology can establish advanced connections between devices or systems or services with the help of the Internet. IoT is leading the way with technology spread across a wide range of devices, including microalgae biorefinery infrastructure.

Microalgae biorefinery involves upstream processing (USP) and downstream processing (DSP) stages (Kit et al., 2017). USP is mainly related to the cultivation process of microalgae, where many essential factors influencing cultivation efficiency are involved (Cheah et al., 2018; Khoo et al., 2020a; Koyande et al., 2019; Lee et al., 2020; Tan et al., 2020). The dominant factors associated with USP include microalgae strain, the supply of CO2, nutrients (such as nitrogen and phosphorus sources), and illumination (Esteves et al., 2020; Fayyaz et al., 2020). DSP involves the process of extracting and purifying valuable bioproducts from microalgae, including the methods and systems used for the extraction and purification (Tang et al., 2020b; Teng et al., 2020). Due to the wide area or even flowing distribution space of microalgae production link and supply chain, the traditional wired sensor technology cannot meet the needs of whole process monitoring and other applications (Ayaz et al., 2017).

In the wake of the recent progress of micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), wireless communication, digital electronics and other disciplines, great progress has been made in IoT technology (Bedi et al., 2018). Currently, researchers have made progress in the exploration of using IoT technology to help microalgae biorefinery globally. Positive achievements have been made in the efficient cultivation of microalgae, classification, identification and screening of algae species, and monitoring of toxic and harmful microalgae in the breeding process. Furthermore, many low-cost and low-power biosensors have been developed, as well as preliminary research on microalgae microrobot, microalgae production prediction decision support system (DSS), and the design of microalgae photobioreactors integrated with IoT, which makes the IoT a wide prospect in microalgae biorefinery, and provides a research basis to realize the automation of microalgae processes. Many technologies can promote the microalgae biorefinery. The Internet of Things is one of them, and it is also a direction that many researchers are aiming for. IoT is indeed an auxiliary tool to promote the biorefineries of microalgae, and it also has played its due role according to recent studies.

Microalgae biofuels, one of the most applications of microalgae, its preparation relies on the upstream processing of microalgae biorefinery, such as microalgae cultivation, which is a process that must be experienced before biomass conversion. IoT provides a highly automated industrial process and helps to screen the microalgae species suitable for biofuel extraction during downstream processing. IoT may not play a role in participating in the preparation of microalgae biofuels directly, but it definitely participates in the entire preliminary process of obtaining microalgae biofuels including help effectively extracting biomass such as lipid for biofuel production. It is closely related to the entire process and exists in any part that requires information sensing, intelligent automation, and data processing.

This critical review investigates and elaborates the biotechnological developments that can be achieved through applying IoT in the day-to-day processing of microalgae biorefinery includes the application of automation, sensors, lab-on-chip, and machine learning in microalgae biorefinery. The main elements and advanced technologies of the IoT, such as the development of sensors, the application of microfluidic technology, algae robots, high-throughput platforms, deep learning, and other innovative techniques are comprehensively reviewed. The advantages and drawbacks of IoT technologies in the bioprocessing of microalgae are critically evaluated. Besides, future research perspectives are also presented that could greatly contribute to the novelty and relevance in the field of microalgae biorefinery. This review can contribute greatly to the novelty and relevance in the field of microalgae biorefinery to develop safer, cleaner, greener, and more economically efficient technologies for resource-energy recovery during the biorefinery process.

Section snippets

Internet of things

The IoT can be divided into three basic parts - sensing, transfer, and processing, in which automation, sensors, and machine learning create an adaptive manufacturing process that can be adjusted in real-time according to changes in the process itself (Fabris et al., 2020). Devices and objects with built-in sensors are connected to an Internet of Things platform, which integrates data from the different devices and applies analytics to share the most valuable information with applications built

Microalgae biorefinery industry

Biorefinery refers to the conversion of biomass resources into bioenergy, biomaterials, and biochemical products, using modern biological processes, engineering technology, green process engineering, new theories, as well as original alternative technologies to achieve efficient, clean, and circular conversion and utilization of biomass resources (Khoshnevisan et al., 2020). Microalgae biorefinery involves upstream and downstream processes (Tan et al., 2018). Upstream processing mainly concerns

IoT applied to the upstream processing (USP) of microalgae biorefinery

IoT combines various information sensing devices with the Internet to form a ubiquitous huge network, which can realize the interconnection of people, machines, and things at any time and any place. Among them, the sensor is an indispensable element and a branch of the Internet of things. To give a comprehensive review of how IoT is applied to microalgae biorefinery, the development, application, and integration of various types of sensors used in microalgae biorefinery are therefore necessary.

Observation of harmful and toxic microalgae

Marine microalgae are the main culprit for the formation of red tide or harmful algal blooms (HAB). Red tide generally refers to the phenomenon of marine plankton (e.g., marine microalgae, protozoa or bacteria) overgrowth, causing the seawater to change color (generally red). Consequently, a global monitoring program has been initiated to observe the composition of phytoplankton, especially harmful and toxic microalgae (Tsaloglou, 2016). At present, there are several molecular methods for

Challenges and future perspectives

IoT has changed the information transmission mode of people, things and services, and the new functional experience will provide users an efficient, convenient and safe lifestyle. However, every rapidly developing technology has specific potential defects, which need to be carefully analyzed and solved, and IoT technology is no exception. Based on the comprehensive review, certain research gaps and limitations need to be overcome to ensure the sustainability of IoT for long-term balanced

Conclusions

With the advent of Industry 4.0, the introduction of new technology like IoT makes complex manufacturing processes automated and simplified. IoT has grown rapidly in factories equipped with high-performance industrial computers, robust sensors, smart algorithms, intelligent robots, and reliable machine-to-machine communication, increasing flexibility and speeding up production and time to industrialization. The successful commercialization of microalgae bio-industry requires the design of an

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Grant Scheme, Malaysia [FRGS/1/2019/STG05/UNIM/02/2] and MyPAIR-PHC-Hibiscus Grant [MyPAIR/1/2020/STG05/UNIM/1]. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the financial support by Taiwan’s Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) under grant nos. 110-2221-E-029 -004 -MY3, 110-2621-M-029 -001, and 109-2622-E-110 -011.

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