Abstract
Microalgae are microorganisms with a great potential, since they contain large amounts of metabolites to the development of products such as bio-ethanol. However, to achieve the release of these compounds is necessary to carry out different types of pre-treatment to the algal biomass in a manner which would improve the outcome of the cell disruption for the release of these compounds.
This paper analyzed the effect of thermal pre-treatment to the biomass of Chlorella vulgaris for obtaining fermentable sugars using three different temperatures (105, 75 and 25 °C). The alga was cultivated in bioreactors type airlift in the total absence of light for 16 days using as substrate wastewater production of ethanol from sugar cane molasses; It was then assessed the cell disruption by means of Organosolv and acid hydrolysis in order to free up the fermentable sugars.
Through the OrganoSolv process were obtained 0.165 g of fermentable sugars/g biomass and 0.128 g of fermentable sugars/g of biomass and through the method of acid hydrolysis at a temperature of heat pretreatment of 75 °C for the two cases.
The use of micro-organisms presents a good overview for the development of bioethanol from sugars of microalgae, that already Pose a scenario of a distillery of 100 m3 /day ethanol at 96 % purity would be up to 1,300 m3/day of distillery as a substrate for biomass of C. vulgaris, which would give a large amount of sugars for the development of approximately 1,600 L/d ethanol.
