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ABSTRACT
Along the recent developments of biofuel production, the hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) of microalgae appears as a major process step which could take advantage of converting the whole microalgae content instead of only extracting its lipid content. This study presents the HTL conversion of a microalgae Chlorella sp. bacteria consortium using a batch type reactor. The experiments were carried out using a full factorial experimental design approach, where the main chosen factors were the temperature, the residence time at maximum temperature and the dry-matter-to-water ratio. The biocrude oil is the targeted product characterized along this work; its production and its composition were studied. The yields of biocrudes approach other microalgae studies using pure strains of microalgae and batch-type reactors. Maximum yields (37%daf) and lowest O/C ratio (0.167) were obtained at the highest severity conditions (310 °C for 55 min and 0.15 dry-matter-to-water ratio). The energy return on energy invested (EROEI) of the process has been determined. The simulated distillation by thermogravimetric analysis (Sim-Dis-TGA) was conducted on the different obtained biocrude and no significant effect was observed with respect to five evaporation ranges among the studied conditions. GC-MS characterization of biocrude presents the 10 relatively most abundant components for each studied condition.
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by BioFuelNet Canada, by the Mitacs Accelerate Program, by the Fonds de recherche du Québec — Nature et technologies and by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. The authors are grateful to Sylvain Duquette and Josée Doucet (Innofibre) for calorimetry, IC and GC-MS analyses, to Khalil Jradi for TGA analysis and to Sabrina Rondeau and to Simon Fréchette-Gélinas for assistance and technical support.
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17597269.2016.1168027
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
