Bioenergetics of growth and lipid production in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

Kübra Küçük, Rahul Tevatia, Esra Sorgüven, Yaşar Demirel and Mustafa Özilgen

Energy, 2015, vol. 83, issue C, 503-510

Abstract: The study of thermodynamic aspects of the lipid, e.g., raw material for biodiesel, production in microalgae is important, as the non-lipid producing biological activities of the algal cultivation consume part of the solar energy captured during photosynthesis in expense of the exergetic efficiency of the lipid production process. The cultivation of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii (a unicellular biflagellate fresh-water microalga) is modeled as a three-step chemical mechanism representing growth, respiration, and lipid production. Further, the comprehensive thermodynamic analysis of these mechanisms is presented. The cumulative degree of perfection of the cellular proliferation, after excluding the lipid synthesis, fluctuates with no trend around 0.52 ± 0.19. The exergy analysis has indicated that C. reinhardtii prefers to maximize the lipid production when it is difficult to generate new cells. Under batch production of algal biomass, the highest heat and exergy loss per unit biomass production are accountable under the most favorable biological growth conditions, whereas the highest exergetic efficiency of the lipid production accounted under the least favorable growth conditions, which is in line with the previous studies.

Keywords: Chlamydomonas reinhardtii; Cumulative degree of perfection; Exergetic efficiency; Flagella work; Lipid production; Photosynthesis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:83:y:2015:i:c:p:503-510

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2015.02.054

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