Supercritical Carbon Dioxide and Microwave-Assisted Extraction of Functional Lipophilic Compounds from Arthrospira platensis

Abstract

Arthrospira platensis biomass was used in order to obtain functional lipophilic compounds through green extraction technologies such as supercritical carbon dioxide fluid extraction (SFE) and microwave-assisted extraction (MAE). The temperature (T) factor was evaluated for MAE, while for SFE, pressure (P), temperature (T), and co-solvent (ethanol) (CS) were evaluated. The maximum extraction yield of the obtained oleoresin was (4.07% ± 0.14%) and (4.27% ± 0.10%) for SFE and MAE, respectively. Extracts were characterized by gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and gas chromatography flame ionization detector (GC-FID). The maximum contents of functional lipophilic compounds in the SFE and MAE extracts were: for carotenoids 283 ± 0.10 μg/g and 629 ± 0.13 μg/g, respectively; for tocopherols 5.01 ± 0.05 μg/g and 2.46 ± 0.09 μg/g, respectively; and for fatty acids 34.76 ± 0.08 mg/g and 15.88 ± 0.06 mg/g, respectively. In conclusion, the SFE process at P 450 bar, T 60 °C and CS 53.33% of CO2 produced the highest yield of tocopherols, carotenoids and fatty acids. The MAE process at 400 W and 50 °C gives the best extracts in terms of tocopherols and carotenoids. For yield and fatty acids, the MAE process at 400 W and 70 °C produced the highest values. Both SFE and MAE showed to be suitable green extraction technologies for obtaining functional lipophilic compounds from Arthrospira platensis.

Innovative Alternative Technologies to Extract Carotenoids from Microalgae and Seaweeds

“…Several researchers have used co-solvents such as ethanol [26,108,109,111,113,114,118,120,121,122,123,124,125,126,127], acetone [113], vegetable oil [26,106,128] as polarity modifiers for the efficient recovery of carotenoids such as β-carotene [113,118], astaxanthin [106,109,114,120,121,122,125,129], lutein [111,113] and zeaxanthin [118]. Since supercritical CO 2 is non-polar, addition of a small amount of co-solvent increases the ability of supercritical CO 2 to dissolve relatively polar carotenoids.…”

“…Recently, Esquivel-Hernández et al [126] showed that MAE is an excellent technique for the recovery of total carotenoids from microalgae/cyanobacteria Arthrospira platensis (Spirulina). MAE extraction performed using a mixture of methanol/ethyl acetate/light petroleum (1:1:1 v / v ) at 400 W power, 50 °C temperature and 1 bar pressure, for 15 min yielded 629 μg/g of total carotenoids, which was significantly higher than the yield obtained by SFE (283 μg/g) (ref).…”

Microwave-Assisted Green Extraction Technology for Sustainable Food Processing

“…When the cosolvent is used at 53.33% of CO 2 ratio, the highest amount of extracts was obtained. In case of MAE extraction, the most efficient experimental condition was obtained at 400 W and 50 C [21].…”

Integrated biorefinery fromArthrospira platensisbiomass as feedstock for bioethanol and lactic acid production

“…The cyanobacterium Arthrospira platensis is an outstanding sunlight-driven cell factory that has the ability to convert carbon dioxide into high added value metabolites (Singh et al, 2017). This photosynthetic cyanobacterium have received much attention for high value metabolites such as α-tocopherol, β-carotene, lutein and γ-linolenic acid (Esquivel-Hernández et al, 2016;Sosa-Hernández et al, 2019) and bioactive effects such as antiproliferative, antitumor, antifungal, antibacterial, antimalarial, antiviral, antimycotic, cytotoxicity, multi-drug resistance reversers and immunosuppressive agents (Dixit & Suseela, 2013;Ediriweera et al, 2017;Kumari et al, 2011).…”

“…platensis contains approximately 65% of proteins, 20% of carbohydrates, 7% of minerals and 5% of lipids, (Campanella et al, 1999). After extraction of the high value metabolites, the resulting residual biomass, containing polysaccharides, monosaccharides and proteins (Esquivel-Hernández et al, 2017), can be a suitable feedstock for production of ethanol and lactic acid that can be used as biofuels and raw material of biopolymers in the frame of biorefinery concept and circular economy (Esquivel-Hernández et al, 2016).…”