Effect of Thermal Pre-Treatment on Fermentable Sugar Production of Chlorella Vulgaris

Microalgae are microorganisms with a great potential, since they contain large amounts of metabolites to the development of products such as bio-ethanol. However, to achieve the release of these compounds is necessary to carry out different types of pre-treatment to the algal biomass in a manner which would improve the outcome of the cell disruption for the release of these compounds. This paper analyzed the effect of thermal pre-treatment to the biomass of Chlorella vulgaris for obtaining fermentable sugars using three different temperatures (105, 75 and 25 degrees C). The alga was cultivated in bioreactors type airlift in the total absence of light for 16 days using as substrate wastewater production of ethanol from sugar cane molasses; It was then assessed the cell disruption by means of Organosolv and acid hydrolysis in order to free up the fermentable sugars. Through the OrganoSolv process were obtained 0.165 g of fermentable sugars/g biomass and 0.128 g of fermentable sugars/g of biomass and through the method of acid hydrolysis at a temperature of heat pretreatment of 75 degrees C for the two cases. The use of micro-organisms presents a good overview for the development of bioethanol from sugars of microalgae, that already Pose a scenario of a distillery of 100 m(3) /day ethanol at 96 % purity would be up to 1,300 m(3)/day of distillery as a substrate for biomass of C. vulgaris, which would give a large amount of sugars for the development of approximately 1,600 L/d ethanol.