Seaweed was a previously untapped resource and is currently gaining increasing attention for its potential as biorefinery feedstock. In this emerging field of seaweed biorefinery, scientific production started in 2009 and has been rising at a fast pace with an annual growth rate of 17.49%, as shown by our bibliometric analysis1. The results of the keyword co-occurrence analysis based on the same bibliographic collection reveal a continued research interest in the fermentation process and a growing interest in extracting biomolecules with unique functional properties. The former is presumably due to the variety of the products derived from the fermentable sugars in seaweed biomass (e.g., biofuels, bioplastics, etc.) and the versatility of the products (e.g., succinic acid as a platform chemical), which can improve the economic viability of biorefinery businesses. The latter is likely to be driven by favorable market conditions, e.g., growing demand and prospects for market entry. Besides, there is a tendency of expanding existing phase I biorefinery systems to the multiple-line production system. Side (waste)-stream valorization through improved biomass utilization may result in increased environmental performance and economic value creation. This presentation provides an overview of progress in this research field by demonstrating a catalog of top value-added seaweed biorefinery products and cascading biorefinery designs.

1 Bibliographic collection used for the science mapping analysis was retrieved from a query on Web of Science (WoS) database by using generic keywords ("macroalgae*"OR"seaweed*")AND"biorefinery*”. After screening, a collection consisting of complete bibliographic data of 136 records was processed in R with package Bibliometrix (http:\\www.bibliometrix.org).