Wet oil extraction of micro algae with intelligent ionic liquids

Research Project

Project/Area Number	25820380
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
Allocation Type	Multi-year Fund
Research Field	Properties in chemical engineering process/Transfer operation/Unit operation
Research Institution	Tohoku University
Principal Investigator	AIDA Taku 東北大学, 環境科学研究科, 助教 (00466541)
Project Period (FY)	2013-04-01 – 2015-03-31
Project Status	Completed (Fiscal Year 2014)
Budget Amount *help	¥4,290,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,300,000、Indirect Cost: ¥990,000) Fiscal Year 2014: ¥1,170,000 (Direct Cost: ¥900,000、Indirect Cost: ¥270,000) Fiscal Year 2013: ¥3,120,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,400,000、Indirect Cost: ¥720,000)
Keywords	化学工学 / 高分子化学 / 分離工学 / 抽出 / 微細藻類 / イオン液体 / 相平衡
Outline of Final Research Achievements	The production of oil from algae requires multiple steps. Organic solvents such as hexane are used for the extraction of oil from the algae, however currently an energy consuming drying pretreatment step is required. This study investigates a wet extraction method using ionic liquid surfactants. This method extracts the oil from the algae within the culture with ionic liquids by two steps: (1) extraction oil from the algae into the aqueous phase by formation of oil in water micelles at warm temperatures, and (2) separation of oil and ionic liquid and water at low temperatures. In this study, equal oil extraction yields were obtained between the (A) ionic liquid wet extraction method and (B) the current extraction method, using drying and hexane extraction. The recovery of ionic liquid after the phase separation was 80 to 100%. These results show that the ionic liquid wet extraction method can be a promising method for oil extraction from algae.