Name : [in Japanese]
Location : [in Japanese]
Date : August 01, 2017 - August 02, 2017
Pages 76-77
Botryococus braunii, BOT-22 can be a producer of hydrocarbon which is secreted naturally from the body and accumulated in the colony that the strain makes. Content of hydrocarbon of the strain was from 30 to 50 wt%-dry cells depending on the cultivation phase. Because the conventional thermal-drying process for the algal biomass before an extraction process using organic solvent needs both high energy-inputs and costs, it can be useful that the hydrocarbon is recovered through a wet-extraction method. In this work, the new wet-extraction system was developed to control a colony-disruption and to recover hydrocarbon effectively. In the experiments, the colony-destruction treatment was conducted by flowing culture media (biomass slurry) through a capillary nozzle. After that, n-heptane was rapidly contacted to culture media and then, the solvent contained the extracted hydrocarbon. The results of quantitative analysis of hydrocarbon using gas chromatography showed that hydrocarbon was more effectively extracted at higher flow rate of biomass slurry. From the available experimental data, a dimensionless parameter of Reynolds number could dominate the extraction efficiency.
