Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Original Research Article | OPEN ACCESS

Biodiesel Production from Azolla filiculoides (Water Fern)

Ali Salehzadeh¹ , Akram Sadat Naeemi², Amir Arasteh¹

¹Department of Microbiology, Rasht Branch, Islamic Azad University, Rasht, Iran; ²Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, University of Guilan, Rasht, Iran.

For correspondence:- Ali Salehzadeh Email: salehzadeh@iaurasht.ac.ir Tel:+981313210173

Received: 14 January 2013 Accepted: 16 March 2014 Published: 26 June 2014

Citation: Salehzadeh A, Naeemi AS, Arasteh A. Biodiesel Production from Azolla filiculoides (Water Fern). Trop J Pharm Res 2014; 13(6):957-960 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v13i6.19

© 2014 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Purpose: To assess the potential of Azolla filiculoides, total body collected from a rice farm in northern Iran as source for biodiesel production.

Methods: Solvent extraction using Soxhlet apparatus with chloroform-methanol (2:1 v/v) solvent blend was used to obtain crude oil from freeze-dried the Azolla plant. Acid-catalyzed transesterification was used to convert fatty acids (FA), monoglycerides (MG), diglycerides (DG) and triglycerides (TG) in the extracts to fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs) by acid-catalyzed methylation. Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) was employed to analyze the FAMEs in the macroalgae biodiesel.

Results: The presence of myristic acid (C14:0), palmitic acid (C16:0), palmitoleic acid (C16:1), myristic acid (C14:0), stearic acid (C18:3), oleic acid (C18:1) and linoleic acid 9C18:2), eicosenoic acid (C20:1), eicosapentaenoic acid (C20:5), erucic acid (C22:1) and docosahexaenoic acid (C22:6) in the macroalgae biodiesel was confirmed.

Conclusion: The results indicate that biodiesel can be produced from macroalgae and that water fern is potentially an economical source of biodiesel due its ready availability and probable low cost.

Keywords: Biodiesel, Azolla filiculoides, Water fern, Fatty acid methyl esters