Sunday, May 3, 2009
3-65
Pretreatment of Seaweeds for Production of Chemical Intermediates
Gwi-Taek Jeong1, Seok-Hwan Park2, Jae-Hee Park2, and Don-Hee Park3. (1) School of Biological Sciences and Technology & Interdisciplinary Program of Graduate School for Bioenergy & Biomaterials, Chonnam National University, Gwangju, South Korea, (2) Interdisciplinary Program of Graduate School for Bioenergy & Biomaterials, Chonnam National University, Gwangju, South Korea, (3) Interdisciplinary Program of Graduate School for Bioenergy and Biomaterials, School of Biological Sciences and Technology, Chonnam National University, Gwangju, South Korea
Biotechnology for macro- and microalgae began to develop in the middle of the last century. Recently, there are used to several applications such as nutritional additives of food and animal feed, cosmetic additives, and bioenergy sources, etc. Seaweeds mainly divided into three kinds such as brown, red and green seaweed. They have a high content of carbohydrates, easily degradable and making them a potential substrate for the production of liquid fuel. In the past, most of the work of bioconversion using seaweed had been related to methane production. Recently, the production of liquid fuels such as bioethanol, biobutanol and biodiesel from seaweed and microalgae has lately attracted considerable attention. A lot of research is performed about different pretreatment methods to enhance the digestibility of cellulosic materials. Nevertheless, the pretreatment method of seaweed has received very little attention. In this study, we investigate the pretreatment method of seaweed, and evaluate the properties of seaweed extract for using potential substrate for the synthesis of chemical intermediate and bioenergy.