Lipid extraction from wet Nannochloropsis biomass via enzyme-assisted three phase partitioning

A green and efficient enzyme assisted three phase partitioning (EA-TPP) process was firstly developed to extract microalgal lipids using wet Nannochloropsis sp. biomass. In the pretreatment of microalgal biomass by four hydrolytic enzymes, TPP obtained a higher TFAs lipid extraction efficiency by cellulase compared with the resting enzymes. After optimization by EA-TPP of the wet disrupted Nannochloropsis biomass (3 g), the maximum TFAs extraction yield (90.40%) was attained at 20% ammonium sulphate, 6-7 pH, 1:2 slurry/tert-butanol ratio and 70 °C for 2 h incubation time and two extraction cycles. Moreover, results also revealed that the lipidic species compositions of Nannochloropsis sp. biomass were greatly related with the EA-TPP parameters. In the laboratory scale for wet disrupted microalgae biomass, EA-TPP process achieved 88.70% TFAs extraction yield under the optimized conditions. In all, EA-TPP process could be a promising approach to extract microalgae lipids for food application using wet microalgae biomass.