Fatty acids recovery from microalgae for biodiesel production

R. MONTERO; P. HEGEL; C. POPOVICH; C. DAMIANI; S. PEREDA; P. LEONARDI

Cartagena

Conferencia; III Iberoamerican Conference on Supercritical Fluids; 2013

Universidad del Valle

The freshwater microalga Neochloris oleoabundans has been recognized as a promising oil feedstock, due to its capacity to accumulate lipids. Particularly, recent studies pointed out the potential of N. oleoabundans, cultured in sea water or in anaerobically digested dairy manure, to produce triglycerides with high content of monounsaturated fatty acids.  Taking into account these results, the aim of the present study was to investigate the methanolysis of N. oleoabundans under supercritical methanol to recover fatty acids as fatty esters or biodiesel. In this work the fatty acids recovery from partially dried microalgae with supercritical methanol is studied in a batch stainless steel reactor (14 cc). A methanol to algae mass ratio of 2.7 g/g, and different temperatures (533 K and 553 K) were analyzed against the reaction times in order to evaluate the crude bio-oil production and its biodiesel content. Fatty esters yields up to 10 wt% respect to the initial biomass processed were obtained.