title: Effects of pulsed electric field treatment on enhancing lipid recovery from the microalga, Scenedesmus.
abstract: Chloroform and methanol are superior solvents for lipid extraction from photosynthetic microorganisms, because they can overcome the resistance offered by the cell walls and membranes, but they are too toxic and expensive to use for large-scale fuel production. Biomass from the photosynthetic microalga Scenedesmus, subjected to a commercially available pre-treatment technology called Focused-Pulsed® (FP), yielded 3.1-fold more crude lipid and fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) after extraction with a range of solvents. FP treatment increased the FAME-to-crude-lipid ratio for all solvents, which means that the extraction of non-lipid materials was minimized, while the FAME profile itself was unchanged compared to the control. FP treatment also made it possible to use only a small proportion of chloroform and methanol, along with isopropanol, to obtain equivalent yields of lipid and FAME as with 100% chloroform plus methanol.
authors.affiliation: Swette Center for Environmental Biotechnology, The Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, P.O. Box 875701, Tempe, AZ 85287-5701, USA.
authors.forename: YenJung Sean
authors.initials: YS
authors.lastname: Lai
authors.affiliation: Swette Center for Environmental Biotechnology, The Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, P.O. Box 875701, Tempe, AZ 85287-5701, USA. Electronic address: pparame1@asu.edu.
authors.forename: Prathap
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Parameswaran
authors.affiliation: Swette Center for Environmental Biotechnology, The Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, P.O. Box 875701, Tempe, AZ 85287-5701, USA; State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource and Environment, School of Municipal and Environmental Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150090, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Ang
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Swette Center for Environmental Biotechnology, The Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, P.O. Box 875701, Tempe, AZ 85287-5701, USA.
authors.forename: Maria
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Baez
authors.affiliation: Swette Center for Environmental Biotechnology, The Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, P.O. Box 875701, Tempe, AZ 85287-5701, USA.
authors.forename: Bruce E
authors.initials: BE
authors.lastname: Rittmann
mesh_terms: D018533:Biomass; D004560:Electricity; D050356:Lipid Metabolism; D058086:Microalgae / Q000378:metabolism*; D044444:Scenedesmus / Q000378:metabolism
keywords: Fatty acid methyl ester (FAME); Folch; Isopropanol; Lipids; Pulsed electric field (PEF)