Tanisha Manchanda¹*, Rashmi Tyagi² and Durlubh Kumar Sharma³

¹Gurugram University, Haryana, India
²Department of Applied Sciences, The North Cap University, Haryana, India
³Centre for Energy Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Hauz Khas, New Delhi, India

*Corresponding Author: Tanisha Manchanda, Gurugram University, Haryana, India.

Received: April 05, 2021; Published: May 29, 2021

Abstract

Botryococcus braunii is a hydrocarbon rich alga which has the potential to produce good quality fungible fuel i.e. biodiesel having high calorific value. As it contains lipids and hydrocarbons having branched carbon chains, the biodiesel produced from it may have better fuel characteristics such as cloud and pour point and oxidative stability. The major bottleneck in the production of biodiesel and other value-added chemicals, products and fuels from algae is the cost of nutrient medium used for the growth of algae. An economical nutrient medium containing very few essential nutrients in considerably reduced concentrations, 0.2 g/L NaNO₃, 0.028 g/L single super phosphate, 0.12 g/L MgSO₄.7H₂O and 0.05 g/L muriate of potash was designed and formulated by reducing the amount and number of components of Chu-13 medium and substituting some of these with economical commercial grade chemical fertilizers. This devised nutrient medium with almost 87% reduction in cost can be effectively exploited for the commercial cultivation of the alga for the production of biomass. The co-cultivation of cyanobacteria along with Botryococcus braunii for supplying the nitrogen required in the media would also further help in economizing the cost of the media. Algal biomass produced can be effectively utilized for the production of fungible fuels such as oil and hydrocarbons. Thus, present studies would help in the reduction of the cost of the process of production of biodiesel having higher calorific value from the Botryococcus braunii in future algal biorefineries.

Keywords: Botryococcus braunii; Economic Medium; Single Super Phosphate; Muriate of Potash

Citation

Citation: Tanisha Manchanda., et al. “Process Development Engineering of Botryococcus braunii Cultivation: Designing the Economical Nutrient Medium for Commercial Cultivation of Potential Hydrocarbon-rich Botryococcus braunii”. Acta Scientific Biotechnology 2.3 (2021): 03-13.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2021 Tanisha Manchanda., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.