Proteins recovery from wet microalgae using liquid biphasic flotation (LBF)

Win Nee Phong; Pau Loke Show; Wei Heng Teh; Tiong Xin Teh; Hilary Mae Yan Lim; Nurul Shafira Binti Nazri; Chung Hong Tan; Jo-Shu Chang; Tau Chuan Ling

doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2017.05.165

Proteins recovery from wet microalgae using liquid biphasic flotation (LBF)

Bioresour Technol. 2017 Nov;244(Pt 2):1329-1336. doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2017.05.165. Epub 2017 May 29.

Authors

Win Nee Phong¹, Pau Loke Show², Wei Heng Teh³, Tiong Xin Teh³, Hilary Mae Yan Lim³, Nurul Shafira Binti Nazri³, Chung Hong Tan³, Jo-Shu Chang⁴, Tau Chuan Ling¹

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
² Bioseparation Research Group, Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, Jalan Broga, 43500 Semenyih, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia; Manufacturing and Industrial Processes Division, Faculty of Engineering, Centre for Food and Bioproduct Processing, University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, Jalan Broga, 43500 Semenyih, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia. Electronic address: pauloke.show@nottingham.edu.my.
³ Bioseparation Research Group, Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, Jalan Broga, 43500 Semenyih, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia.
⁴ Department of Chemical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan; Research Center for Energy Technology and Strategy, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan.

PMID: 28602664
DOI: 10.1016/j.biortech.2017.05.165

Abstract

In this work, the extraction of microalgal protein from wet Chlorella sorokiniana species using alcohol/salt liquid biphasic flotation (LBF) with the aid of ultrasonication for cell rupturing was proposed. The effect of varying crude feedstock concentration, flotation time, salt type, salt concentration, alcohol type, alcohol concentration, initial volumes of salt and alcohol were investigated. After the optimization process, the highest proportion of protein recovered in the top phase was achieved with 250g/L ammonium sulphate, 60% (v/v) 2-propanol, 1.0V_R,initial, 20g/L crude biomass load, 4mm³/min air flowrate and 10min of flotation time. The recycling of phase components was introduced to minimize the use of alcohol and salt in the corresponding LBF. It was demonstrated that top phase (alcohol) recycling can achieve increasing performance for three consecutive recycling runs. Under optimized process conditions, the proportion of protein recovered in the top phase was 88.86% for the third recycle run.

Keywords: Liquid biphasic flotation (LBF); Microalgae; Protein recovery; Ultrasonication.

MeSH terms

2-Propanol
Biomass
Chlorella*
Microalgae*
Recycling

Substances

2-Propanol