Global warming along
with energy demand and rising prices of natural
energy resources have motivated studies to find some renewable and
clean energy. The use of algae as the third-generation biofuel can
avoid the competition for farmland, and algae can be considered as
a potential future source of renewable energy. Algae can be used for
biogas production through anaerobic digestion (AD). Fucus vesiculosus and Fucus serratus are the two dominating species of brown seaweed growing in the Baltic
Sea in the southwest of Sweden. Pretreatment can significantly affect
the biogas production because hydrolysis of the algae cell wall structure
is a rate-limiting step in the AD process. In this study, four different
pretreatments: mechanical, microwave (600 W, 2 min), ultrasonic (110
V, 15 min), and microwave combined with ultrasonic (600 W, 2 min;
110 V, 15 min) were applied to the seaweed and then codigested with
a biogas plant leachate. The aim of this study was to investigate
methane yields from AD after these pretreatments. The results showed
that when compared with only mechanical pretreatment, the ultrasonic,
ultrasonic combined with microwave, and microwave pretreatments could
obtain increased cumulative methane yields of 167, 185, and 156%,
respectively. The combined pretreatment showed a maximum methane yield of 260 mL/g·of
volatile solids after 20 days of digestion. The ultrasonic combined
with microwave pretreatment showed a significant improvement in methane
yield when compared with the mechanical pretreatment.
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