High-Voltage Pulsed Electric Field Preprocessing Enhances Extraction of Starch, Proteins, and Ash from Marine Macroalgae Ulva ohnoi

Abstract

Marine macroalgae are an attractive source for biorefineries as an alternative to terrestrial crops, and new, sustainable macroalgae biomass fractionation methods are needed. One of the least investigated macroalgae-derived products is starch. In this work, we report on a device and a protocol for pretreatment for starch extraction from a green macroalga Ulva ohnoi (U. ohnoi) with an emerging, nonthermal, and environmental friendly technologypulsed electric field (PEF). Using the custom-made insulated gate bipolar transistor-pulsed generator combined with a gravitation press-electrode device, we show that 200 pulses with a field strength of 1 kV cm −1 , pulse duration of 50 μs, and pulse repetition rate of 3 Hz concentrate the starch in the U. ohnoi biomass by 59.38% by removing the salts, proteins, and other small molecules. The starch extraction yield from the PEF-pretreated biomass is 59.54 ± 1.34%, compared to 52.31 ± 3.21% from untreated biomass. In addition, PEF combined with pressing increased the coextracted macroalgae protein by more than 4 times and ash by 1.5 times in comparison with pressing alone. These results indicate the potential of PEF pretreatment for challenging macroalgae biomass fractionation in the sustainable marine biorefinery.

Enhancement of the Antioxidant, Anti-Tyrosinase, and Anti-Hyaluronidase Activity of Morus alba L. Leaf Extract by Pulsed Electric Field Extraction

“…[17][18][19][20][21][22]. Furthermore, PEF has been defined as a green extraction technology because of its substantial minimization of toxic solvents, reduction of waste products, and lower energy consumption compared to conventional thermal extraction and dehydration processes [23][24][25].…”

Bioactive Peptides from Algae: Traditional and Novel Generation Strategies, Structure-Function Relationships, and Bioinformatics as Predictive Tools for Bioactivity

“…doubled when using alkaline solvents (pH 8) compared to water; however, the recovery of proteins from the biomass was still low compared to other physical extraction procedures, such as UAE [ 19 ]. PEF has been described as a promising method for the extraction of proteins from the macroalga Ulva ohnoi [ 20 ]. The authors achieved a 3-fold increase in the yield of proteins from U. ohnoi of with the application of PEF.…”

Current knowledge on the extraction, purification, identification, and validation of bioactive peptides from seaweed

“…Another study reported the application of PEF with a custom‐made insulated gate bipolar transistor‐pulsed generator coupled with a gravitation press‐electrode to aid protein extraction from U. ohnoi [45]. Under optimized conditions (see Table 2), a significant enhancement in protein yield, i.e., from 3.16 to 14.94% in the control extract and the extract obtained following PEF treatment, respectively, was achieved [45].…”