Lipid production in algae - review of harvesting methods

Abstract

This review intends to offer constructive information to help future progress of competent technology for algae-based productions in wastewater. Since microalgae have great potential of producing lipid and biopolymers in parallel with treatment of wastewater such as palm oil mill effluent, the present paper reviews the improvements of microalgae- harvesting technologies in recent years. The cost effective harvesting technology is necessary in order to grasp these applications. In view of the fact that the incorporation of microalgae products with wastewater treatment has chief benefits, utilizing an incorporated system comprising the significant production and harvesting of microalgae in downstream processing is the most important challenge in both industries. This paper reviews up to date progresses in large-scale systems for algae production and harvesting method, utilizing wastewater comparing open ponds and closed reactor systems. Besides, the improvement of performance and reduction of chemical addition requirements for conventional mechanical methods is illustrated in this review. In addition, microalgae are highly competent of diminishing CO2 emission and unsaturated fatty acid production. With the purpose of recovery of microalgae, several methods such as centrifugation, filtration, flocculation and flotation have been developed. The improvement of performance and reduction of chemical addition requirements for conventional mechanical methods is illustrated in this paper. The betterment of developing of Large-scale systems to produce the controlled algae, harvesting in wastewater treatment and processing the microalgae bio-products demonstrated herein. As a final point, this paper represents the effects of biomass harvesting methods on microalgal biomass and oil production.