Moringa oleifera SEED DERIVATIVES AS POTENTIAL BIO-COAGULANT FOR MICROALGAE Chlorella Sp. HARVESTING (Potensi Derivatif Biji Moringa oleifera sebagai Bio-Pengental untuk Penuaian Mikroalga Chlorella sp.)

Microalgae is an economical and potential raw material of biomass energy, which offer a wide range of commercial potential to produce valuable substances for applications in aquaculture feed, pharmaceutical purposes and biofuels production. However, lack of an economical, efficient and convenient method to harvest microalgae is a bottleneck to boost their full-scale application. Hence, this study was performed to investigate the potentialities of Moringa oleifera seed derivatives as an environmentally biocoagulant to harvest microalgae Chlorella sp. biomass from the water column, which acts as a binder to coagulate particulate impurities to form larger aggregates. Results shown M. oleifera to have better biomass recovery of 122.51% as compared to 37.08% of alum at similar dosages of 10 mg·L. In addition, it was found that the zeta potential values of mixed microalgaecoagulant suspension shows positive correlation on the flocculation parameters. For biomass recovery, the correlation for M. oleifera protein powder showed the R-value of 0.9565 whereas the control chemical flocculant, alum with the R-value of 0.7920. It was evidence that M. oleifera has a great potential in efficient and economical for environmentally microalgae harvesting and the adaptation of biological harvesting technology especially for the purpose of aquaculture feed in Malaysia.