Research

Agricultural Sciences

Title :

Cost effective sustainable process for microalgal based ?-linolenic acid production from microalgae through biorefinery approach

Area of research :

Agricultural Sciences, Chemical Sciences

Focus area :

Linolenic acid production from microalgae

Principal Investigator :

Dr Sourish Bhattacharya, Scientist, CSIR-Central Salt & Marine Chemicals Research Institute (CSIR-CSMCRI), Bhavnagar

Timeline Start Year :

2020

Timeline End Year :

2022

Contact info :

Details

Executive Summary :

Objective: Microalgal cultivation at a scale of 750 m2, Generation of 50 Kg ?-linolenic acid, 3 Kg e-polylysine and 18 Kg protein rich biomass

Summary: A sustainable model will be designed for the production of high-value products from Chlorella variabilis through a greener approach. Microalgal cultivation at a scale of 3ton per annum will be done for preparing 50 Kg ?-linolenic acid, 3 Kg e-polylysine and 18 Kg protein powder on annual basis. In this proposed project, a sustainable process will be developed for production of 50 Kg ?-linolenic acid, 3 Kg e-polylysine and 18 Kg protein rich powder from 3 ton microalgal biomass using wild strain CSMCRI’s Chlorella variabilis(ATCC PTA 12198). Microalgal mass cultivation will be done in 10 open ponds each having 15m x 5m x 0.5m dimension. The total capacity of each pond will be 37 m3 wherein two ponds will be kept for generating the inoculum and 8 ponds will be utilized for mass cultivation for generating the biomass with assumed average productivity of 70±5 g/m2/d. Further, ?-linolenic acid and e-polylysine would be prepared from generated microalgal biomass.

Organizations involved