Development and validation of a screening procedure of microalgae for biodiesel production: Application to the genus of marine microalgae Nannochloropsis

Abstract

Nannochloropsis has emerged as a promising alga for biodiesel production. However, the genus consists of 6 species and hundreds of strains making strain selection a challenge. Furthermore, oil productivity is instrumental to economic viability of any algal strain for industrial production, which is dependent on growth rate and oil content. In most cases, these two parameters have been studied independently. Thus, the goal of this study is to provide a combined method for evaluating strain performance in specially designed photobioreactors together with an in-depth lipidomic analyses. The nine strains of Nannochloropsis tested showed considerable variations in productivity and lipidomics highlighting the importance of strain selection. Finally, Nannochloropsis gaditana CCMP527 and Nannochloropsis salina CCMP537 emerged as the two most promising strains, with an oil content of 37 and 27 dry wt% after 11-day nitrogen starvation, respectively, resulting in TAG productivity of 13×10(-3) and 18×10(-3) kg m(-3) d(-1), respectively.

Microalgae cultivation in urban wastewater: Nutrient removal and biomass production for biodiesel and methane

“…It consisted of six small-scale photobioreactors (bubble columns) run in parallel, each tube having a volume V r = 3 · 10 −5 m 3 , an illuminated area of S L = 0.008 m 2 and a specific illuminated area of a light = S/V r of 266.7 1/m. A full description of the EOSS-PBR is done in Taleb et al [18].…”

“…Before inoculation, the culture medium was filtered through a 0.45 μm pore size filter to remove undesirable small particles. The pH in the culture medium was around 7.5 for the freshwater microalgae species and 8 for the marine microalgae species, according to Pruvost et al and Taleb et al [17,18]. The culture agitation was provided by continuous injection of air with 2 vol.% CO 2 at a flow rate of 3 mL/min; the incident photon flux density (PFD), by a set of 6 fluorescent white tubes was~150 μmol/m 2 ·s.…”

Screening of freshwater and seawater microalgae strains in fully controlled photobioreactors for biodiesel production

“…Some of the challenges include the wide biodiversity of microalgae and the dependency of their photosynthetic activity and especially their lipid metabolism on their cultivation conditions. Previously, Taleb et al, (2015) showed that TAG accumulation capacity cannot be the only criterion used to select the ideal strain. Many species are well known to accumulate large amount of neutral lipids and TAGs in nitrogen starvation conditions .…”

Towards microalgal triglycerides in the commodity markets

“…TAG) can be quantified [38–40] should be routinely adopted. The predictability of such high-throughput screenings should be validated at lab scale with the selected strains and processes should be developed under simulated outdoor production conditions [34]. Finally, the selected strains should be tested outdoors in pilot PBRs under relevant climate conditions [24, 41, 42].…”