Bio-fuel production from microalgae

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Tezin Türü: Doktora

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Fen Edebiyat Fakültesi, Biyolojik Bilimler Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2015

Öğrenci: MELİH ONAY

Eş Danışman: HÜSEYİN AVNİ ÖKTEM, AYŞE MERAL YÜCEL

Özet:

Bio-fuel is a renewable fuel and it includes different biofuel energy sources such as methane, bioethanol and biodiesel. Generally, biodiesel is produced from agricultural waste, vegetable oils such as soybean and palm oil. Third generation biofuels called as microalgae have been appeared nowadays. In the current study, biodiesel production from thermo-resistant green microalgae was focused on. For this aim, microalgae were sampled from a few hotspring points in Haymana and isolated. Identification and characterization of isolated microalgae were performed morphologically via scanning electron microscopy and molecularly via ITS2 region. They were named as Scenedesmus sp.ME02, Hindakia tetrachotoma ME03 and Micractinium sp. ME05. Also, three different solvent extraction methods and five cell disruption techniques (Homogenization Assisted, Microwave Assisted, Ultrasonnication, Glass Bead and Lyophilization Assisted) were applied for effective lipid recovery from three green microalgae. The highest lipid content was found as 27.3 ± 2.6 % of dry weight for Micractinium sp. ME05 at lyophilization and ultrasonnication assisted method with vi Soxhlet method. Biodiesel productivity of Micractinium sp. ME05 was 89 ± 3.1 %. Also, protein concentrations, carbohydrate percentages and chlorophyll contents of Micractinium sp. ME05 were 56.48 ±2.99 %, 15.57 ± 0.79 %, and 114 ± 12.6 μg/mL, respectively. The present work also comprised genetic manupilation of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii 137- by electroporation and the lipid contents of mutants were determined by using high throughput fluorescence technique. As a conclusion, present study is the first report demonstrating biodiesel production from thermo-resistant green microalgae isolated from Central Anatolia, Haymana, Ankara.