Pre-treatment Methods for Effective Resource Recovery from Microalgal Biomass

In this present world, the over dependency on non-renewable fossil fuel is a huge problem. They are not only limited in nature but their utilisation emits a lot of poisonous gases and also carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which leads to environment pollution along with global warming. Biofuel produced from microalgae is a renewable source of energy and a promising solution to this problem. The key step in the biofuel production is the extraction of lipids by disrupting the microalgal cells. Hence, various pre-treatment methods are applied for proper disruption of complex microalgal cell walls. The pre-treatment method includes mechanical pre-treatment, physical pre-treatment, chemical pre-treatment and thermal pre-treatment. There are other pre-treatment methods like nanocatalyst pre-treatment, ammonia pre-treatment, etc. In this chapter, the various pre-treatment methods for effective resource recovery from microalgal biomass, their advantages and disadvantages along with the present studies have been discussed.