Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering, Vol.94, No.2, 238-243, 2016
INVESTIGATION OF AN INTEGRATED APPROACH FOR BIO-CRUDE RECOVERY AND ENZYMATIC HYDROLYSIS OF MICROALGAE CELLULOSE FOR GLUCOSE PRODUCTION
Cellulose from microalgae offers potential value as a source of fermentable sugars. This cellulose can be used after the extraction of other valued products in the biomass such as bio-crude. In this paper, an integrated approach to bio-crude and glucose recovery from microalgae was studied. First the bio-crude recovery efficiency using high-pressure steaming was calculated for microalgae cultures with different lipid and cellulose contents. Next, enzymatic hydrolysis was applied to obtain fermentable sugars. The best extraction efficiency with high-pressure steaming was 97.9 +/- 8.3% for the algae containing the lowest cellulose content. The algae treatment with high-pressure steaming at 210 degrees C followed by hydrolysis with cellulase led to glucose yields of 0.28 g/g(biomass), indicating that high-pressure steaming is a suitable method for the production of two sources of bio-fuels (bio-crude and glucose) from microalgae.