earticle

영어

Fossil fuels as the source of transport fuels are now widely recognized as unsustainable due to problems with global warming and limited availability. Renewable biofuels including biodiesel, bio-ethanol, bio-hydrogen, bio-oil and bio-gas have been focused on as an alternative energy source. A variety of biomasses from different sources have been investigated as the feedstock for the production of different biofuels. Microalgae have a higher photosynthetic efficiency than other biomasses. In addition, microalgae have been promoted as a future source of transportation fuels primarily because of their potential to produce up to 10 times the amounts of oil per acre compared with vegetable oils, animal fats and crops. In this study, supercritical fluid extraction of microalgae was performed to study the influence of process parameters such as extraction time, temperature, pressure and ultrasonic power on the yield and composition of the extracted oil. In addition, the effect of the size, amount and packing method of glass beads on the oil extraction was investigated in detail.