earticle

영어

Continuous use of fossil fuels is now widely recognized as unsustainable because the burning of an enormous amount of fossil fuel has increased the CO₂level in the atmosphere, contributing to the greenhouse effect. Biomass has been focused on as an alternative energy source. Among biomass, microalgae have a higher photosynthetic efficiency than other biomass. In addition, microalgae have been promoted as a future source of transportation fuels primarily because of their stated potential to produce up to 10 times the amounts of oil per acre than vegetable oils, animal fats and crops. In this study, lipid compounds were extracted by supercritical carbon dioxide from microalgae biomass and their fatty acid composition was analyzed.
HPLC with an evaporative light scattering detector and GC with a flame ionization detector were used to identify lipid families and fatty acids, respectively. The main aim of this work is to investigate the kinetics of the supercritical fluid extraction and the effect of operating condition on the extraction yield and on the fatty acid composition of lipid extracts.