Lipid extraction from microalgae Chlorella and Synechocystis sp. using glass microparticles as disruption enhancer

Abstract

In this study, the effect of adding microparticles of glass as a cell disruption enhancer to maximize the extracted lipid from wild-type microalgae Synechocystis and Chlorella sp. has been investigated. A general factorial design approach at different levels has been implemented to evaluate the effectiveness of size and quantity of glass particles for both species. The statistical analysis of variance for the obtained results revealed the significance of the method and defined factors. The recorded extraction efficiency of lipid without addition of particles was 45.02 and 23.19% for Synechocystis and Chlorella sp., respectively. With the addition of particles, the highest recorded value for Chlorella was 34.01% which stands for 46.60% enhancement of extraction efficiency. This was achieved when 40 µm particles in 2.25 mass proportion of particle to dried biomass were used. The addition of particle did not improve the lipid extraction efficiency for the Synechocystis sp. These findings also showed that the conventional gravimetric methods may underestimate the lipid content of microalgae species