Page 702 - e-Book

in water as well as from the environment, released during the photosynthesis process. They

consume 38×1012 tons of CO2 in a year (Marini 2007, Su et al.,2009 and Singh et al.,
2014). Terrestrial plants have a slow growth rate and contribute only 2-5% to absorb of

harmful CO2 released by fossil fuels. So CO2 sequestration by the plants is not considered
as an optimum strategy for reduction of CO2 from the environment (Skjanes et al., 2007,

Kumar et al., 2011 and Anjos et al., 2013). The microalgae have 20-30 times faster growth
rate and 10-50 times higher CO2 fixation ability as compared to the terrestrial plants (Chisti,

2007 and Dragone et al., 2011). Biofuels are one of the reliable energy resources which are

gaining attention by various researchers, scientists and environmentalist as these fuels are
produced from biological matter. Biomass of crops, algae and even the organic waste of

human as well as animal activities can be used for biofuel production. In the algal biodiesel

formation process, the algal oil extracted from dry biomass are trans esterified using
methanol and NaOH as catalyst, as a result,fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs), are formed. It

involves the following reaction:

In this study, alkali trans esterification method was used as a main way to produce biodiesel
fuel from algal biomass. More specifically, this paper also focused on trans esterification

conditions such as the methanol to oil ration and percentage of moisture content in algal oil
which have important role on trans esterification reaction conversion efficiency.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

The green microalga Chlorella pyrenoidosa was isolated from secondary effluent collected
from the sewage treatment plant, Pholriwal, Jalandhar. Using the streaking technique, each

dilution was poured in petri plates containing solidified Fogg’s media (Fogg, 1975). To
augment the concentration of microalgal cells, the selected algal member i.e. C. pyrenoidosa

was inoculated in 500ml Erlenmeyer conical flasks with 250ml of working Fogg’s medium.

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