Macroalgal biomass in terms of third-generation biorefinery concept: Current status and techno-economic analysis – A review

Macroalgae is an emerging third-generation feedstock and promising biomass within the biorefinery context to produce biofuels and high-added value compounds. Biorefinery involves processes and technologies in the context of sustainable bioeconomy. Throughout the biorefinery process is important not to neglect parameters and conditions that can impact the optimization, such as pretreatment, solid loading in enzymatic hydrolysis and, fermentation. In this case, the techno-economic analysis allows designing a feasible process of macroalgae valorization considering differents important parameters for scaling up the process for biofuels and chemicals to approach all these compounds for a future market and commercial. According to these arguments, this review aims to describe the macroalgae biorefinery, applications, and techno-economic analysis to provide the general panorama of economic feasibility for the valorization of macroalgae biomass in terms of biorefinery and circular bioeconomy.