Renewable fuels from pyrolysis of Dunaliella tertiolecta: An alternative approach to biochemical conversions of microalgae

Nejmi Söyler, Jillian L. Goldfarb, Selim Ceylan and Melek Türker Saçan

Energy, 2017, vol. 120, issue C, 907-914

Abstract: The cultivation of microalgae as a feedstock for renewable fuels is widely touted as a way to sequester CO2 while negating food versus fuel competition for land. However, the widespread industrial use of microalgae for biofuels has yet to reach a critical stage based on lipid extraction alone. One alternative to the transesterification of microalgae for liquid fuel production is to use thermochemical conversion techniques. In the present work, we demonstrate that Dunaliella tertiolecta can be converted to biofuels via pyrolysis at temperatures significantly lower than terrestrial biomasses. The primary gaseous pyrolysis products were CO2, H2O, CH4, alcohols, aldehydes, organic acids and phenols. The iso-conversional distributed activation energy model was used to calculate the kinetic parameters, showing average activation energy of 243.3 kJ/mol, with a peak in activation energy at mass fraction conversions between 0.45 and 0.65. However, the substantial amount of pyrolysis gases evolved at low temperatures (between 280 and 320 °C), suggests that pyrolysis at higher temperatures, and especially to completion, might not be necessary to optimize pyrolytic production of biofuels from microalgae.

Keywords: D. tertiolecta; TG-FTIR; Microalgae; Pyrolysis; Biofuel; Activation energy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544216318035
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:120:y:2017:i:c:p:907-914

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2016.11.146

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().