Efficiency of Fe(3)O(4) Nanoparticles with Different Pretreatments for Enhancing Biogas Yield of Macroalgae Ulva intestinalis Linnaeus

In this work, different pretreatment methods for algae proved to be very effective in improving cell wall dissociation for biogas production. In this study, the Ulva intestinalis Linnaeus (U. intestinalis) has been exposed to individual pretreatments of (ultrasonic, ozone, microwave, and green synthesized Fe(3)O(4)) and in a combination of the first three mentioned pretreatments methods with magnetite (Fe(3)O(4)) NPs, (ultrasonic-Fe(3)O(4), ozone-Fe(3)O(4) and microwave-Fe(3)O(4)) in different treatment times. Moreover, the green synthesized Fe(3)O(4) NPs has been confirmed by FTIR, TEM, XRD, SEM, EDEX, PSA and BET. The maximum biogas production of 179 and 206 mL/g VS have been attained when U. intestinalis has been treated with ultrasonic only and when combined microwave with Fe(3)O(4) respectively, where sediment were used as inoculum in all pretreatments. From the obtained results, green Fe(3)O(4) NPs enhanced the microwave (MW) treatment to produce a higher biogas yield (206 mL/g VS) when compared with individual MW (84 mL/g VS). The modified Gompertz model (R(2) = 0.996 was appropriate model to match the calculated biogas production and could be used more practically to distinguish the kinetics of the anaerobic digestion (AD) period. The assessment of XRD, SEM and FTIR discovered the influence of different treatment techniques on the cell wall structure of U. intestinalis.