Screening of biomethane production potential from dominant microalgae

ABSTRACT

The use of microalgae for biomethane production has been considerably increasing during the recent years. In this study, four dominant species belonging to the genera Scenedesmus, Chlorella, Dunaliella and Nostoc were selected. The influence of different genera with several morphological, structural and physicochemical characteristics on methane production was assessed in biochemical methane potential (BMP) tests. The ultimate methane yield values were 332 ± 24, 211 ± 2, 63 ± 17 and 28 ± 10 mL CH₄/g VS_added for Scenedesmus obliquus, Chlorella sorokiniana, Dunaliella salina and Nostoc sp., respectively. The highest methane production was achieved by microalga species that had no complex cell wall or wall basically composed by proteins and simple sugars such as in S. obliquus, whereas lower methane yields were found for D. salina and Nostoc sp., due to the salinity effects and cell wall composition in terms of complex polysaccharide and glycolipid layers, respectively. Kinetic constant values obtained in the BMP tests ranged between 1.00 ± 0.08 and 0.097 ± 0.005 days⁻¹ for D. salina and S. obliquus, respectively.

KEYWORDS:

• Anaerobic digestion
• biomethane
• microalga
• specific strains

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Dr. Carlos Vilchez from the University of Huelva (Huelva, Spain) for kindly providing microalgae.

Funding

The authors express their gratitude to Marie Curie's International Research Staff Exchange Scheme (PIRSES-GA-2011-295165) and Junta de Andalucía government (RNM-1970) for providing financial support.