Membrane filtration has been considered as an promising harvesting technology in the fields of microalgal biorefinery to produce biofuels and valuable chemicals from microalgal biomass. For developing the effective membrane-based harvesting process to produce highly concentrated biomass, membrane fouling should be controlled because it leads to not only reduced filtration rate but also insufficient reachable concentration of harvested biomass for downstream process. For that, a dynamic filtration using a rotating disk was evaluated in this study, efficiently generating high shear flow near the membrane surface by an independently moving part. It was demonstrated to achieve feasible filtration performance even under high biomass concentration with complete biomass recovery and moderate energy consumption observed.

Although microalgae are considered as a promising feedstock for biofuels, cost-efficient harvesting of microalgae needs to be significantly improved. In this study, the use of electro coagulation as a more rapid flocculation method for harvesting a freshwater (Scenedesmus dimorphus) microalgae species was evaluated. The results showed that, electro coagulation was shown to be more efficient using an aluminum anode than using an iron anode. And optimum conditions of electro coagulation for harvesting Scenedesmus dimorphus were found. The optimum stirring speed was 100 rpm and optimum pH was 5. Furthermore, the current density which the fastest and highest recovery efficiency is achieved at 30 A/m2, while the highest energy efficiency was achieved at 10 A/m2. A the rapid and high recovery efficiency indicate that electro coagulation is a particularly attractive technology for harvesting microalgae.