Jose Luis Salgueiro

Bioenergy Use from Pavlova lutheri Microalgae

A competitive price of biofuels is necessary for large-scale development. To reduce the overall costs of biofuels production from microalgae, a total use of feedstock was pursued in this research. Besides, the optimization of the different stages involved in biodiesel synthesis process was carried out. The use of algal waste, residue after biodiesel production, as raw material for pellets manufacturing, was analysed. In addition, other techniques as microwave irradiation or ultrasound were used to extract the algal oil and subsequently characterize the oil by gas chromatography. The highest yield of oil extracted (24.77%) was obtained when a microwave irradiation took place previously to ultrasound-assisted extraction. However, less than half of oil was extracted by ultrasound (11.74%). The results showed that high biodiesel conversions, about 50–67%, were achieved by direct transesterification. In addition, pellets from waste biomass could be used as fuel in biomass boilers. Therefore, an integral use of the microalgal raw material was accomplished. No residues were generated and two valuable biofuels were obtained: biodiesel and pellets.Graphical abstract

Simulating a Versatile Plant for Biodiesel Production

A versatile biodiesel production process that allows simulation of a plant that can produce biodiesel by transesterification of vegetable oils of any composition to methyl esters is proposed. The validity of the simulation was verified by producing biodiesel and glycerin from different amounts of algal oil feedstocks. The versatile model can be applied to different types of oils by changing only the input parameters. It provides a series of advantages not only in terms of resource and time saving when building a real plant, but also when selecting the most suitable feedstocks for biodiesel production.