Comparison of Four Lipid Extraction Methods from Microalgae Dunaliella Sp. for Biodiesel Production

Abstract

The present study attempts to investigate Solvent Extraction (SE), Ultrasonic Assisted Extraction (UAE), Microwave Assisted Extraction (MAE), and acid treatment lipid extraction (ATLE) methods for the extraction of oil from Dunaliella Sp. In doing so, the results showed that UAE, MAE, and ATLE led to an increase in lipid extraction compared to SE. The extracted lipid using MAE (with 17.83 % extraction efficiency) was significantly higher than UAE (14.5 %) and SE (9.16 %) methods. However, considering the energy aspects, ATLE method (17.06%) by omitting the algal biomass drying process and directly extracting lipid from wet biomass could be introduced as an effective method for lipid extraction and biodiesel production process from Dunaliella Sp cells. The fatty acid profile of extracted oil from different methods showed that the extraction method has not a significant effect on the fatty acid composition of the oil. Also, the produced biodiesel properties were according to ASTM standards.