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Background  Oleaginous microorganisms are attractive feedstock for production of liquid biofuels. Direct hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) is an efficient route that converts whole, wet biomass into an energy-dense liquid fuel precursor, called ‘biocrude’. HTL represents a promising alternative to conventional lipid extraction methods as it does not require a dry feedstock or additional steps for lipid extraction. However, high operating pressure in HTL can pose challenges in reactor sizing and overall operating costs. Through the use of co-solvents the HTL operating pressure can be reduced. The present study investigates low-temperature co-solvent HTL of oleaginous yeast,  Cryptococcus curvatus,  using laboratory batch reactors.    Results  In this study, we report the co-solvent HTL of microbial yeast biomass in an isopropanol–water binary system in the presence or absence of Na 2 CO 3  catalyst. This novel approach proved to be effective and resulted in significantly higher yield of biocrude (56.4 ± 0.1 %) than that of HTL performed without a co-solvent (49.1 ± 0.4 %)( p  = 0.001). Addition of Na 2 CO 3  as a catalyst marginally improved the biocrude yield. The energy content of the resulting biocrude (~37 MJ kg −1 ) was only slightly lower than that of petroleum crude (42 MJ kg −1 ). The HTL process was successful in removing carboxyl groups from fatty acids and creating their associated straight-chain alkanes (C 17 –C 21 ). Experimental results were leveraged to inform techno-economic analysis (TEA) of the baseline HTL conversion pathway to evaluate the commercial feasibility of this process. TEA results showed a renewable diesel fuel price of $5.09 per gallon, with the HTL-processing step accounting for approximately 23 % of the total cost for the baseline pathway.    Conclusions  This study shows the feasibility of co-solvent HTL of oleaginous yeast biomass in producing an energy-dense biocrude, and hence provides a platform for adding value to the current dairy industry. Co-solvents can be used to lower the HTL temperature and hence the operating pressure. This process results in a higher biocrude yield at a lower HTL temperature. A conceptual yeast HTL biofuel platform suggests the use of a dairy waste stream for increasing the productivity and sustainability of rural areas while providing a new feedstock (yeast) for generating biofuels.    Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13068-015-0345-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Oleaginous yeast platform for producing biofuels via co-solvent hydrothermal liquefaction