Saccharification and Ethanol Production from Chlorella sp. Through High Speed Extrusion Pretreatment

Abstract

1) Among various pretreatment processes for bioethanol production, extrusion pretreatment, one of cheap and simple process was investigated to efficiently produce fermentable sugars from micro alga, Chlorella sp. The biomass was pretreated in a single screw extruder at five different barrel temperatures of 45, 50, 55, 60 and 65℃, respectively with five screw rotation speed of 10, 50, 100, 150 and 200 rpm. The pretreated biomass was reacted with two different hydrolyzing enzymes of cellulase and amyloglucosidase since the biomass contained different types of carbohydrates, compared to cellulose of agricultural by-products such wheat and corn stovers, etc. In general, higher glucose conversion yield was obtained as 13.24 (%, w/w) at 55℃ of barrel tem perature and 100 rpm of screw speed conditions. In treating 5 FPU/glucan of cellulase and 150 Unit/mL of amyloglucosidase, ca. 64% of cellulose and 40% of polysaccharides in the micro alga were converted into glucose, which was higher yields than those from other reported data without applying an extrusion process. 84% of the fermentable sugars obtained from the hyrolyzing processes were fermented into ethanol in considering 50% of theoretical maximum fermentation yield of the yeast. These results implied that high speed extrusion could be suitable as a pretreatment process for the production of bioethanol from Chlorella sp.