Local bioprospecting for high-lipid producing microalgal strains to be grown on concentrated municipal wastewater for biofuel production

Isolation and Characterization of Native Microalgae from the Peruvian Amazon with Potential for Biodiesel Production

“…Finally, in Acutodesmus obliquus, the bulk of fatty acids were oleic (18:1n-9), palmitic (16:0), linoleic (18:2n-6) and α-linolenic (18:3n-3) acids, which constituted 87.99% and 89.80% of the total FAME in +N and −N conditions, respectively. Our results agree with multiple previously-published reports in that fatty acids with a length of sixteen (C16) and eighteen (C18) carbon atoms are very frequent in many green microalgae species [45,46,[48][49][50]55]. It is notable that under nitrogen starvation culture, all microalgae strains showed an increase in monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA) from 7.3% in Ankistrodesmus sp.…”

“…strain NAN001). These percentage values in total lipid content are similar to several microalgae species of these genera isolated and characterized by other researchers worldwide [20,45,46,[48][49][50]57]. Furthermore, it is important to emphasize that lipid content is dependent on the different growth phases.…”

“…Considering the SFA and unsaturated fatty acids (UFA) components, approximately 20%-31% are SFA and 69%-80% are UFA. Hence, the SFA/UFA ratio in the microalgae strains evaluated ranges between 0.25 and 0.45, which is similar to the reports of several microalgae species isolated in different latitudes worldwide [20,31,48,49,70,72]. It is important to highlight that the fatty acid profile determination is an essential step in the process of the characterization of microalgae strains, because it ultimately affects the quality of the biodiesel product [84,85].…”

“…Overall, the identification of native microalgae strains presented a good correspondence between morphological characters and sequence-based phylogenetic analysis. Microalgae species of these genera were also isolated from different countries of the world, such as Brazil [47], Argentina [46], United States [48], India [20], Egypt [49], Taiwan [50], South Korea [45] and China [51]. Some of these microalgae genera, such as Ankistrodesmus, Chlorella, Desmodesmus and Scenedesmus, were used in large-scale biodiesel production using photobioreactors and raceway pond systems [52,53].…”

Biomass and Lipid Yield of Locally Isolated Microalgae

“…BACKGROUND Wenguang et al collected 60 algae-like microorganisms from different sampling sites in Minnesota to select high-lipid producing facultative heterotrophic microalgae strains capable of growing on concentrated municipal wastewater (CMW) for simultaneous energy crop production and waste water treatment. Among twenty-seven strains were found, 5 strains has the ability to adapt to CMW, high growth rates (0.455-0.498d -1 ) and higher lipid productivities (74.5-77.8 mgL -1 d -1 ) [5]. Brian et al also found out wild microalgae which are isolated from Minnesota lakes and ponds have high productivity and sufficient lipids for further use in biodiesel production studies when comparing with D.tertiolecta [6].…”