Eventos Anais de eventos
ENCIT 2016
16th Brazilian Congress of Thermal Sciences and Engineering
MICROALGAE BIOMASS LIPID EXTRACTION – AN ENERGY AND COST ANALYSIS APPROACH OF PROCESS
Submission Author:
GUstavo Finger , PR , Brazil
Co-Authors:
LORENA PANAGE MOURA, Isabela Caserta, Gustavo Ogasawara, Wellington Balmant, André Bellin Mariano, JOSÉ VIRIATO COELHO VARGAS
Presenter: GUstavo Finger
doi://10.26678/ABCM.ENCIT2016.CIT2016-0488
Abstract
In order to produce biodiesel from microalgae biomass, the extraction of lipids from dry biomass is needed. The most used way is due to liquid extraction using organic solvents. In this process, lipids were extracted by 50% molar mixture of hexane and ethanol with a high effectiveness in lipids removal. The biomass used was produced by engineering scale photobioreactors (PBR) with 10 m3 capacity exposed to sunlight in Curitiba-Brazil. The process is carried out in an agitated batch reactor with a 20 L capacity, which processes 3 kg of algae biomass using 15 L of solvent mixture at 50ºC during 3.5 hours. Since the energy demand and the cost associated with the whole process are essential to any viability analysis, all equipment involved in such process was evaluated in terms of its electricity consumption in both transition state and steady state. The energy involved in the extraction was performed using thermodynamic energy balances and the subsequent solvent recuperation was evaluated and taken into account as well. The energy cost in all process of separation is the main problem to the industrial application of algae biomass and the study of its unit operation in pilot scale such as these are critical to determine if the process are viable or not. The total power demand of a batch was 11.73 kWh for a single process of oil extraction, which equals to R$ 8.9 of cost with electricity. The total power spent in each process of oil extraction were evalueted and presented as well.
Keywords
Thermal Analysis, Lipid Extraction, Algae Biomass, Cost Analysis
