Investigation of Important Fatty Acids in Biofuel Production From Number of Microalgae

Abstract

Algae biofuels is considered as an alternative source to fossil fuels. In recent decades, there was a significant increase in the use of energy sources in order to avoid the depletion of traditional sources such as coal and petroleum. The produced fuel from algal oil had important characteristics compared to that from other vegetable crops. This is due to the short life cycle of development, a fast-growing and easy to be developed. In this study, three types of micro-algae Scendesmus dimorphus, Chlorella vulgaris and Chlorococcum humicola were used and grown in in a 5 liter photobioreactor. The dry biomass productivity of the three algae was estimated, and then a chemical analysis of the total fatty was performed to detect their biological contents as well as diagnose the fatty acid. Results showed that S. dimorphus produced the highest levels in both biomass, 1.58 g l from dry weight and estimation of the total fat indicated C. vulgaris has the highest total fat yield, at 29.6 %. Results of fats characterization using )GLC) showed that S. dimorphus produced the high percentage of saturated fatty acids for the meristic acid ester (C14: 0) by 47% and the lincoseric acid ester (C24: 0) was 7.194%. In contrast, both Chlorella vulgaris and Chlo. humicola showed less level of saturated fatty acids. This indicates the suitability of algae oil derived from S. dimorphus in the synthesis of fatty acid, a major source in producing biofuels.