Thraustochytrids are known for the accumulation of long chain PUFAs, and in particular the omega-3 fatty acids such as DHA, but the accumulation of a relatively high level saturated fatty acids in this culture indicated that this oil could be potentially useful as a precursor to biodiesel. This is an important finding as the use of saturated fatty acid triglycerides from microbial oil is relatively underexplored. We therefore turned to methods to enrich the unsaturated fraction of the microalgal oil. The first strategy was as classic catalytic hydrogenation. Accordingly, the algae oil was dissolved in ethanol before adding a palladium catalyst (20 mg Pd/C for 409 mg of algae oil). The reaction was then sparged with hydrogen and reacted further under one atmosphere of hydrogen for 3 days. The experiment was repeated in triplicate with an average isolated yield of 72% after recovering the product by filtrations through celite. FAMEs analysis was carried out on the product, revealing complete consumption of polyunsaturated components of the oil, but with 21% of the analyzed methyl esters presenting as monounsaturated species (Figure and). This result was consistent with 1 H NMR analysis of the algae oil and products of hydrogenation (Figures ). This hydrogenation method provides a straightforward way for converting the algae oil mixture to mono-and unsaturated triglycerides, but the reaction was not complete even after extended reaction time. More importantly, this experiment provides a benchmark for comparison to the proposed sulfur method, which was investigated next.