Efficient enzyme-catalysed transesterification of microalgal biomass from Chlamydomonas sp.

Facing the global issues of dwindling oil reserves and global warming, the search for alternative green energy source has become a priority. Microalgal biofuels has been regarded as a potential sustainable energy source, due to the high oil yield per area of land, ease of culturing microalgae, zero net carbon emission and reduced competition for arable land. In this paper, five different lipid extraction methods were studied using dry biomass of the microalga Chlamydomonas sp. Folch et al. method gave the highest oil yield of 26.27 wt%. The extracted microalgal oil underwent transesterification process using immobilised lipases. The highest conversion achieved was 72.09% in the following optimized conditions: 0.100 g of immobilised enzymes and solvent to methanol volume ratio of 1:1 with tert-butanol as the organic solvent.