Fundamentals in Microalgae Harvesting: From Flocculation to Self-attachment

Microalgae are a very promising source of biodiesel and other renewable energy due to their fast grow rates, high lipid contents and tremendous potential for water conservation and CO2 biofixation. However, a bottleneck issue with algae biofuel manufacturing is the lack of cost-effective harvesting methods. This research focuses on the technologies for improved microalgae harvesting to enable commercially viable and environmentally friendly biodiesel production. The first objective of this study was to optimize flocculation of marine microalga Nannochloropsis oculata with metal salts, aluminum sulfate (A.S.) and ferric chloride (F.C.) via response surface methodology. It was found that there existed a positive stoichiometric relationship between the flocculant dose (FD) and the initial biomass concentration (IABC). Optimum flocculation conditions were predicted at IABC of 1.7 g/l, pH 8.3, and FD of 383.5 microM for A.S., and IABC of 2.2 g/l, pH 7.9, and FD of 438.1 microM for F.C., under which the predicted maximum harvested solid concentration of algae were 32.98 and 30.10 g/l by using A.S. and F.C., respectively. The second objective was to investigate the mechanism of microalgae flocculation with metal salts. The theory of Derjaguin, Landau, Verwey and Overbeek (DLVO) was applied to understand the flocculation mechanism of a freshwater alga Scenedesmus dimorphus and a marine alga Nannochloropsis oculata under various pH and aluminum sulphate ionic strengths. Effective flocculation was achieved as a result of charge neutralization and sweep flocculation. When low flocculant dosage (<0.1 mM) was applied, charge neutralization seemed to be predominating and the DLVO predicted flocculation trends were found quantitatively accurate in matching the experimental results. In the case of high flocculant dosage, the DLVO theory failed to explain the results since sweep flocculation was found to predominate at alum dose above 1 mM.;Understanding of cell-to-cell interactions of microalgae offered possibilities in design of a novel semi-immobilized algal production and harvesting method, which exploited cell to substrata interactions instead of cell-to-cell interactions. In such method, a solid carrier was used to grow and accumulate algal cells and the cost of harvesting and drying can be simply reduced by easy algae-water separation. In order to enable the envisioned algal attachment, the third objective was to investigate the cell to substrata attachment by a thermodynamic model. Based on the theoretical analysis, when the polar surface energy of the cell is greater than that of water, cellular attachment would be more favorable on materials with higher dispersive surface energy but lower polar surface energy. If the polar surface energy of the cell is smaller than that of water, more cell attachment would be expected on materials that are higher in both dispersive and polar surface energies. The model was also validated its capability in designing, selecting, and matching algal strains and solid carrier materials to enhance cell attachment. The forth objective was to investigate the effect of surface texturing on algal attachment. It was found that surface texturing had a greater effect than surface free energy, by changing the liquid wetting behavior and real contact area. The attachment is preferred when the feature size is close to the diameter of the cell attempting to settle. Larger or smaller feature dimensions have the potential to reduce cellular attachment. The fifth objective was to study the role of carrier materials and their surface roughness in attachment. If the surface chemical composition was similar, the attachment and orientation of algal cells was found to depend on the surface average roughness, wherein rougher surfaces resulted in increased attachment. Whereas, the attachment was strongly related to surface free energy as described by the thermodynamic model if materials were chemically different.