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Electric Pulse Pretreatment for Enhanced Lipid Recovery from Chlorella protothecoides

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Abstract

Developing effective, energy-efficient methods to extract lipids from microalgae remains a challenge in bioenergy. This study assesses electric pulse (EP) pretreatments to enhance lipid extraction from Chlorella protothecoides. In tandem with solvent extraction, we applied 10, 50, 100, 200, and 300 60 kV/cm, 60 ns duration EPs or 3, 17, 33, 67, and 100 60 kV/cm, 300 ns duration EPs to match the energy density u applied to the sample for each EP duration. Lipid recovery increased with increasing u for each EP duration until reaching a maximum for 17 300 ns EPs (the second lowest u) and 100 60 ns EPs (the third lowest u) to achieve a 13.3% and 16.1% increase in lipid extraction, respectively. Lipid extraction declined at higher u due to increased cell lysis. The largest net energy released calculated from the difference between the energy available from the extracted lipids and the applied energy of the EPs occurred at the lowest u for each EP duration. Applying trains of 100 μs EPs induced qualitatively similar behavior. These results suggest that a more detailed parametric study may optimize EP parameters for net energy release for specific microalgae and solvents.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Anand Vadlamani and Andrew Fairbanks for helping to set up the NSEP generator and Lakshya Mittal and Raji Sundararajan for assisting with the electroporator.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Davidson School of Chemical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 47907, USA

    Caleb H. Geissler, Mary L. Mulligan, Shaunak Ray & John A Morgan

  2. School of Nuclear Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 47906, USA

    Zane E. Zmola & Allen L. Garner

  3. School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 47907, USA

    Allen L. Garner

  4. Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 47907, USA

    Allen L. Garner

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  1. Caleb H. Geissler
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  2. Mary L. Mulligan
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  6. Allen L. Garner
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Contributions

CG, MLM, SR, JAM, and ALG conceived and designed the experiment; CG, MLM, and ZEZ collected and assembled the data; CG, MLM, and ALG analyzed and interpreted the data; and CG and MLM drafted the article. All authors critically contributed to the reading, commenting, and writing of the manuscript. All authors certify that they have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content, including participation in the concept, design, analysis, writing, or revision of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Allen L. Garner.

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Geissler, C.H., Mulligan, M.L., Zmola, Z.E. et al. Electric Pulse Pretreatment for Enhanced Lipid Recovery from Chlorella protothecoides. Bioenerg. Res. 13, 499–506 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12155-019-10064-z

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