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Transesterification of marine macroalgae using microwave technology

ABSTRACT Biodiesel is renewable and environmental friendly, with caloriﬁc value equivalent to regular fossil fuel. This fuel can be produced from a variety of feedstocks, such as ﬁrst-generation biodiesel feedstock (corn, peanut, soybean), second generation (jatropha, animal fats, waste cooking oils, macroalgae), and third generation (microalgae). Among these feedstocks, biodiesel production from microalgae has drawn special attention for different reasons: they have high lipid content and high growth rates; they are tolerant to severe environmental conditions; they offer the possibility of sequester carbon dioxide from the ﬂue gases; their harvesting and transportation are economical compared to other crops; and they have very high photosynthetic yields compared to other terrestrial plants. The advantage of using macroalgae recollected on the beaches as raw material is that allows to obtained energy from a residue. Microwave-assisted extraction and transesteriﬁcation of microalgae is being researched as a solution for biodiesel production by its benefits, such as shorter reaction times and less amount of heat energy to obtain biodiesel. It is due to the fact that microwaves can easily penetrate through the cell wall structure to extract and transesterify the oils into biodiesel. The aim of this research was to explore the possibility of carrying out the microwave-assisted transesterification of three marine macroalgae (brown and green). Different experimental runs were carried out with different process parameters such as macroalgae-to-methanol ratio, reaction time and catalyst concentrations. Based on the obtained results, the best conditions for microwave-assisted transesteriﬁcation reaction were macroalgae-to-methanol ratio of 1:15 (wt/vol), sodium hydroxide concentration of 2 wt% and reaction time of 3 min.