BIOFAT project: Production of biodiesel and bioethanol by microalgae
As part of the European BIOFAT project, AlgoSource Technologies has relied on the team and means of AlgoSolis and GEPEA to convert the biomass produced by the BIOFAT consortium into biofuels.
Biodiesel was thus produced after extraction of the lipids from the Nannochloropsis microalga, and bioethanol was produced from the sugars of the Tetraselmis microalga.
The equipment available on the AlgoSolis platform made it possible to produce these products for the first time on a pilot scale using so-called wet processes. These processes make it possible to dispense with the energy-consuming step of drying the biomass, thus opening new perspectives for this application. The final conversion to biofuels was carried out on the PREVER platform of the GEPEA laboratory (Ecole des Mines de Nantes), as well as their final characterization in relation to biodiesel and bioethanol standards. The data generated allowed to feed the technical-economic analyzes of the global processes developed within BIOFAT.
