期刊名称:International Journal of Environment and Bioenergy
电子版ISSN:2165-8951
出版年度:2012
卷号:3
期号:1
页码:34-45
语种:English
出版社:Modern Scientific Press
摘要:Biodiesel (fatty acid methyl ester, FAME) made from vegetable oil (lipid, usually in the form of triacylglycerol, TG) is one of renewable energy as an alternative for petroleum diesel fuel. Microalgae had been chosen in this research due to its high lipid content, short generation time and requires few cultivations area; results in high yield of lipid per acre cultivation compared with other terrestrial plants. In this current study, supercritical methanol (SCMeOH) method has been proposed to overcome problems regard to requirements of catalyst, drying, and lipid extraction process at biodiesel production from microalgae biomass. According to Kusdiana et al. (2001), to reduce more cost and for safety reason it is also considered that milder condition, i.e. lower temperature and pressure than 350 ℃ and 45 MPa respectively are more preferable. It was observed in this research that high water content of Chaetoceros calcitrans biomass had effect on reducing FAME production, though reaction rate of dry and wet biomass was relatively similar. Furthermore, fatty acid conversion was found to exceed 100% and activation energy to convert lipid inside Chaetoceros calcitrans cell using this method was similar with activation energy to convert TG that had been found by previous researcher. According to these results, it is concluded that direct conversion of microalgae biomass under SCMeOH method at milder condition is possible to be conducted. Therefore, utilization of microalgae as raw material on a large scales production while conducting supercritical methanol method to convert the biomass to biodiesel might be very promising for future Indonesia.