Study of the microwave lipid extraction from microalgae for biodiesel production

Biomass energy is considered as the most potential petroleum substitute in a shorter period of time, for its renewable ability and lower pollution. This research tends to extract algae oil from microalgae with microwave fragmentation technology. This process can reduce the production costs of microalgae biodiesel. The catalysts prepared in different conditions are characterized by BET, XRD and the conversion from the transesterification catalyzed by each catalyst which was determined using GC. Microwave is used for assisting in the lipid extraction of microalgae by solvents in this study. Microwave assists in lipid extraction under various solvents, and the extracting time and power are compared. The experimental results show that microalgae extracted using the solvent has the largest extracted quantity of microalgae lipid, 30 wt.%, and the heating performance for transesterification shows that the best conversion is 76.2% under 68 degrees C with the Li4SiO4 amount 3 wt.% and the oil/methanol molar ratio 1:18 for 4 h. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.