Evaluation of operating conditions for sustainable harvesting of microalgal biomass applying electrochemical method using non sacrificial electrodes

The efficient harvesting of microalgae is considered to be one of the challenging steps of algal biofuel production and a key factor limiting the commercial use of microalgae. To overcome the limitation of metallic electrodes depletion, the application of non-sacrificial electrode was investigated for the electrochemical harvesting (ECH) of microalgae. The effect of applied current, addition of electrolyte and initial pH were parameters investigated. The highest recovery efficiency of 83% was obtained for Scenedesmus obliquus at 1.5 A, initial pH 9 and 6 g L−1 NaCl with power consumption of 3.84 kWh kg−1. Recovery efficiency of ECH process was comparable to literature reported centrifugation, filtration and chemical flocculation techniques but with a much lower power consumption. The ECH process with addition of electrolyte enhanced the lipid extraction by 22% without any adverse effects. The ECH process with non sacrificial carbon electrodes could be a possible harvesting step at commercial scale microalgal biomass production.