Development of Bioflocculant from Chicken’s Eggshell Membrane to Harvest Chlorella vulgaris

Abstract

As microalgae biomass is considered as the most assuring source of biodiesel, flocculation has become a potential technology that could be able to alleviate microalgae dewatering cost which is the cornerstone hindrance of their full-scale application. However, large scale harvesting of microalgae biomass using commercial flocculating agents is obstructed by economic and environmental drawbacks upon downstream discharge. Thus, in the present work, a novel introduction of natural flocculant extracted from waste biomass, which is, chicken’s eggshell membrane was made to harvest Chlorella vulgaris. Flocculation tests were carried out to test the effectiveness of the natural flocculant to recover microalgae biomass. Chicken’s eggshell membrane was proven to be one of the effective bioflocculant as it achieved above 60 % of flocculation efficiency after 1 hour of sedimentation with optimum flocculation parameters of pH 11.8 with 80 mg/L of flocculant dosage at 40 °C.