Microalgae Harvest through Fungal Pelletization—Co-Culture of Chlorella vulgaris and Aspergillus niger

Sarman Oktovianus Gultom, Carlos Zamalloa and Bo Hu
Additional contact information
Sarman Oktovianus Gultom: Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering, University of Minnesota, 1390 Eckles Ave, MN 55108, USA
Carlos Zamalloa: Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering, University of Minnesota, 1390 Eckles Ave, MN 55108, USA
Bo Hu: Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering, University of Minnesota, 1390 Eckles Ave, MN 55108, USA

Energies, 2014, vol. 7, issue 7, 1-13

Abstract: Microalgae harvesting is a labor- and energy-intensive process and new approaches to harvesting microalgae need to be developed in order to decrease the costs. In this study; co-cultivatation of filamentous fungus ( Aspergillus niger ) and microalgae ( Chlorella vulgaris ) to form cell pellets was evaluated under different conditions, including organic carbon source (glucose; glycerol; and sodium acetate) concentration; initial concentration of fungal spores and microalgal cells and light. Results showed that 2 g/L of glucose with a 1:300 ratio of fungi to microalgae provided the best culturing conditions for the process to reach >90% of cell harvest efficiency. The results also showed that an organic carbon source was required to sustain the growth of fungi and form the cell pellets. The microalgae/fungi co-cultures at mixotrophic conditions obtained much higher total biomass than pure cultures of each individual strains; indicating the symbiotic relationship between two strains. This can benefit the microbial biofuel production in terms of cell harvest and biomass production.

Keywords: co-culture; filamentous fungi; microalgae harvest; pelletization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/7/7/4417/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/7/7/4417/ (text/html)

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:gam:jeners:v:7:y:2014:i:7:p:4417-4429:d:38008

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().