Fundamental study to apply the pulsed power technology on the biomass production

Abstract

The depletion of fossil fuel is a serious global problem. The development of new biomass fuel, which is not made from foods as corn and sugar cane, is an urgent necessity. For the easiness of the cultivation and the richness for containing fuel, hydrophytic microalga is expected as a crude material for biomass fuel. The manufacturing process is sketchily classified into cultivation, extraction of oil component and refinement of fuel. The manufacturing process without cultivation is, however, inefficient at present. This study applies pulsed power technology to the production process of biomass fuel made from microalga, which is the cultivation and extraction process. Nanosecond pulsed electric fields are applied to the microalga to anticipate increment of cultivation speed and modification of component. In this experiment, the alga density of large number of treated samples was higher than that of negative control samples after seven days of the treatment. The technology to open up pores on cell membrane is called electroporation, and it is important cell control technology in the biotechnology. In another experiment, pulsed power was applied to the alga to improve the efficiency of component extracting process with electroporation. The pulsed powers with different pulse length were used to consider the effect.