Effect of pre-treatments on the production of biofuels from Phaeodactylum tricornutum

Abstract

Several characteristics make Phaeodactylum tricornutum potential candidate for biofuels production such as methane and biodiesel. For this reason, some alternatives are evaluated in this manuscript to improve the conversion of this microalgae into methane. One of these alternatives is the addition of sewage sludge to Phaeodactylum tricornutum for anaerobic co-digestion. Although the co-digestion resulted in lack of synergy, the absence of inhibition indicated that both substrates could be co-digested under certain circumstances, for example if microalgae are cultivated for wastewater treatment purposes. The extraction of lipids using organic solvents has been evaluated for biodiesel production but also as a pre-treatment for anaerobic digestion. The results revealed that the type of solvent influences lipid and biodiesel yields. The high polarity of the mixture methanol/hexane increased the lipid and the biodiesel yields from 10 ± 1 to 53 ± 2 gLipids/100 gVS and from 7 ± 1 to 11 ± 1 gBiodiesel/100 gVS compared with hexane. However, none of these solvents affected the composition of biodiesel. Regarding the methane production after the extraction, it yielded 257 ± 8 and 180 ± 6 mLCH4/gVS from lipid-extracted P. tricornutum using hexane and methanol/hexane respectively. The methane production from the raw microalga was 258 ± 5 mLCH4/gVS in the same experiment. The difference in methane production, mainly after the extraction with methanol/hexane, was a consequence of the changes in the composition of the microalgae after extraction. The extraction did not influence the biodegradability. The ultrasonic pre-treatment prior anaerobic digestion completely disrupted the microalgae cells, but the solubilisation of the organic fraction was scarce (<9.5%). The methane production from pre-treated samples was barely 10-11% higher than the obtained from non pre-treated samples, indicating that the refractory nature of the organic fraction in P. tricornutum is the main obstacle for the methane production.

Keywords: Co-digestion; Lipid extraction; Methane; Phaeodactylum tricornutum; Substrate to inoculum ratio (SIR); Ultrasonic pre-treatment.