Biochemical studies on oil feedstock produced from oleaginous fungi for biodiesel production and evaluation of the residual biomass as animal feed

Abstract

A great of effort is being made to produce new energy sources in order to satisfy the rising energy costs of crude oil reservoirs and find alternative sources. Biodiesel is one of the alternative diesel fuels with a favorable combustion emission profile, easy to use, biodegradable and non-toxic. In addition, it is derived from renewable sources such as vegetable oils, animal fats and microbial oils and has no sulphur and no aromatic compounds. Therefore, the objectives of this study were to isolate new filamentous fungi from Egyptian soil that have the ability to produce high amount of lipids and to produce the biodiesel from this fungal lipid via lipase-catalyzed transesterification process. Results reported showed that the fungal isolate E45 was the highest lipid producer and free of mycotoxins such as aflatoxins and ochratoxins. Therefore, identification studies were performed for this isolate using morphological and molecular approaches, and the results reported revealed that it is a new fungal strain and was deposited to the GenBank as Aspergillus sp. EM 2018 under the accession number MK377325.