4. Conclusions
This work demonstrated feasible processes for producing biodiesel
from wet biomass of Chlamydomonas sp. JSC4 following
the microwave disruption, wet oil extraction, transesterification,
and direct transesterification steps. The pretreatment process
transformed wet microalgae into more concentrated microalgae
cake, allowing large scale operation of microalgae oil extraction.
The transesterification of the extracted microalgae oil in hexane
was very efficient at a low reaction temperature of 45 C with
simultaneous removal of the unwanted chlorophyll content.
Furthermore, direct transesterification of the pretreated microalgae
cake for biodiesel production was successful and showed high
potential for practical applications.