Oxidação da parede celular da microalga Chlamydomonas sp. para extração de lipídios e avaliação da sua qualidade para síntese de biodiesel

Abstract

The production of microalgae for energy purposes has become an alternative route to the oil industry by offering renewable biofuels such as bioethanol, bio-oil and biodiesel. The biodiesel is produced by transesterification of the lipid material and in general cases microalgae produce lipids naturally. However, one of the great difficulties in the production of biodiesel from microalgae on a large scale is the lack of efficient methods and inexpensive for lipid extraction. Thus, this paper studied the cell wall oxidation efficiency of microalgae of the genus Chlamydomonas sp. with hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) in the extraction of lipids, also assessing the impact on the quality of the extracted lipids. The increase H2O2 concentration promotes an increase of 60% in lipid yield, indicative of facilitating the disruption of the cell wall, which was proved by thermogravimetric profile of residual biomass and the change of the cell by optical microscopy. However, it was noted the quality parameters decreases after application of the method, generating higher acid numbers and organic peroxides, besides a decrease in iodine content. However, the spectroscopic profile in the infrared region of the lipid extracted material with and without oxidizing action are almost identical, indicating that the decrease of the quality parameters does not significantly affect the major functional groups belonging extracts. The lipid material obtained after use of the oxidative method was completely transesterified, that is, converted into biodiesel, reaching conversions above 96% proven by gas chromatography analysis.