Ferrofluid-assisted rapid and directional harvesting of marine microalgal Chlorella sp. used for biodiesel production

Shih-Hsin Ho; Sheng-Yi Chiu; Chien-Ya Kao; Tsai-Yu Chen; Yu-Bin Chang; Jo-Shu Chang; Chih-Sheng Lin

doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2017.05.110

Ferrofluid-assisted rapid and directional harvesting of marine microalgal Chlorella sp. used for biodiesel production

Bioresour Technol. 2017 Nov;244(Pt 2):1337-1340. doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2017.05.110. Epub 2017 May 20.

Authors

Shih-Hsin Ho¹, Sheng-Yi Chiu², Chien-Ya Kao³, Tsai-Yu Chen⁴, Yu-Bin Chang⁵, Jo-Shu Chang⁶, Chih-Sheng Lin⁴

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource and Environment, School of Municipal and Environmental Engineering, Harbin Institute Technology, Harbin, PR China. Electronic address: stephen6949@hit.edu.cn.
² Water Technology Division, Material and Chemical Research Laboratories, Industrial Technology Research Institute, Hsinchu, Taiwan.
³ Agricultural Technology Research Institute, Hsinchu, Taiwan.
⁴ Department of Biological Science and Technology, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan.
⁵ Bioresource Collection and Research Center, Food Industry Research and Development Institute, Taiwan.
⁶ State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource and Environment, School of Municipal and Environmental Engineering, Harbin Institute Technology, Harbin, PR China; Department of Chemical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan; Research Center for Energy Technology and Strategy, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan.

PMID: 28576481
DOI: 10.1016/j.biortech.2017.05.110

Abstract

In this work, a novel harvesting strategy using ferrofluids coupled with flocculation as a magnetic directional harvesting system was developed, providing a fast and easy way to effectively collect microalgae with no further modifications made to the ferrofluids. With a ferrofluid dosage of 25mgL^-1, a high harvesting efficiency of 95-100% was achieved within 1min. In addition, we successfully performed a wastewater recycling strategy coupled with a microalgal ferrofluid-harvesting dynamic flow-through system to harvest biomass of Chlorella sp. MTF-7 which could achieve over 80% of the maximum level after three repeated recycling cultivations. This work demonstrated the use of an integrated microalgal ferrofluid-harvesting dynamic flow-through system to develop a simple and effective strategy to enhance microalgal harvesting efficiency, along with wastewater recycling, in a marine microalgal Chlorella sp. MTF-7.

Keywords: Chlorella sp.; Ferrofluids; Flow-through system; Microalgal harvesting; Wastewater recycling.

MeSH terms

Biofuels*
Biomass
Chlorella
Flocculation
Microalgae*

Substances

Biofuels