Magnetic harvesting of marine algae Nannochloropsis oceanica

ABSTRACT

The harvesting of Nannochloropsis oceanica was studied using magnetic separation with naked iron oxide particles. Emphasis was given to the effect of pH on harvesting efficiency, while mixing time and steering speed were kept constant. High separation efficiencies (>90%) were obtained over a wide range of pH and particle dosage. At alkaline conditions, high harvesting efficiencies were achieved even at low particle dosages, proving the effectiveness of this method. For process design and optimization purposes, a polynomial model was successfully fitted to experimental data.

KEYWORDS:

• Iron oxide magnetic microparticles
• microalgae harvesting
• Nannochloropsis oceanica

Acknowledgements

We thank Prof. E. A. Pavlatou and Prof. D. Tsoukleris for providing the equipment zetasizer Nano-ZS, as well as Prof. K. Kordatos for providing the infrastructure for particle preparation.

Funding

This work was financially supported by the European Union (European Regional Development Fund – ERDF) and Greek National Funds through the operational program “Competitiveness and Entrepreneurship” of the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF) – Research Funding Program: Synergasia2011/Cooperation2011 – Partnerships of Production and Research Institutions in Focused Research and Technology Sectors (project code: 11SYN_4_1590).

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by the European Union (European Regional Development Fund – ERDF) and Greek National Funds through the operational program “Competitiveness and Entrepreneurship” of the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF) – Research Funding Program: Synergasia2011/Cooperation2011 – Partnerships of Production and Research Institutions in Focused Research and Technology Sectors (project code: 11SYN_4_1590).