Apart from capturing carbon dioxide, fresh water algae can be used to produce biofuel. To assess the energy potential of Chlorococcum humicola, the alga's pyrolytic behavior was studied at heating rates of 5-20 K/min in a thermobalance. To model the weight loss characteristics, an algorithm was developed based on the distributed activation energy model and applied to experimental data to extract the kinetics of the decomposition process. When the kinetic parameters estimated by this method were applied to another set of experimental data which were not used to estimate the parameters, the model was capable of predicting the pyrolysis behavior, in the new set of data with a R-2 value of 0.999479. The slow weight loss, that took place at the end of the pyrolysis process, was also accounted for by the proposed algorithm which is capable of predicting the pyrolysis kinetics of C. humicola at different heating rates. Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.