Oleaginous yeasts have emerged as a sustainable source of renewable oils for liquid biofuels. However, biodiesel production from them has a few constraints with respect to their cell disruption and lipid extraction techniques. The lipid extraction from oleaginous yeasts commonly includes dewatering and drying of cell biomass, which requires energy and time. The aim of this work was to establish a process for the lipid extraction from wet biomass applying acid catalyzed hot water, as well as microwave, and rapid ultrasonication-microwave treatment together with the conventional Bligh and Dyer method. In the wake of testing all procedures, it was revealed that rapid ultrasonication-microwave treatment has great potential to give high lipid content (70.86% w/w) on the cell dry weight basis. The lipid profile after treatment showed the presence of appropriate quantities of saturated (10.39 ± 0.15%), monounsaturated (76.55 ± 0.19%) and polyunsaturated fatty acids (11.49 ± 0.23%) which further improves biodiesel quality compared to the other methods. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of using rapid ultrasonication-microwave treatment for the lipid extraction from wet oleaginous yeast biomass in the literature.
Keywords: Fatty acid methyl esters; Lipid extraction techniques; Lipids; Oleaginous yeast; Rapid ultrasonication-microwave treatment.
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