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Chia, Shir Reen (2021) Development of novel sonoprocessing based bi- and triphasic systems for the extraction of biomolecules from microalgae. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham.

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Abstract

Microalgae have great potentiality to act as reservoirs of viable bioactive compounds due to the attractive composition of high value-added compounds. Besides, lots of advantages have been reported using microalgae compared to plant-based biomolecules as it does not create food competition and has rapid growth rate. The resistant microalgae cell wall has to be overcome through effective yet simple and rapid techniques in separating desired compounds from the biomass for further applications. The conventional processes for processing biomass in the current industries is inefficient and not feasible to be applied on microalgae, at which a cost- and time-saving technique is in desperate need for the efficient production of biomolecules.

This research work reports the development of sonoprocessing-assisted techniques in extracting and purifying biomolecules such as proteins and phycobiliproteins from Chlorella sp.: Chlorella vulgaris FSP-E, Chlorella sorokiniana CY1 and Spirulina sp.: Spirulina platensis, respectively. The proposed techniques in this research work are liquid biphasic system, three phase partitioning and liquid biphasic flotation integrated with the utilization of sonication waves. The protein extraction is performed using liquid biphasic flotation and three phase partitioning assisted with sonication while the phycobiliproteins extraction is conducted using liquid biphasic system and liquid biphasic flotation. A total protein recovery of 80% and 49% of separation efficiency was obtained using sonication-assisted liquid biphasic flotation while 56.57% of protein recovery and 74.59% of separation efficiency were gained using ultrasonication-assisted three phase partitioning. To investigate the scalability of the proposed techniques, the study related to up-scaling of system in extracting the biomolecules are presented and discussed as well. This is an important aspect to determine the feasibility of the proposed technique for large scale and commercializing its usage for industrial production. A scale-up study was performed using ultrasonication-assisted three phase partitioning, from total working volume of 10 mL to 150 mL, obtaining around 57% of protein recovery and 71% of separation efficiency in larger scale of system. On top of that, different types of pre-treatment methods, namely freeze-thawing, homogenisation, microwave and sonication were studied in conjunction with the multiphase separation techniques for phycobiliprotein extraction. Phycobiliproteins was recovered at 94.89% with 6.17 of purification factor using liquid biphasic system while 95.10% of recovery and 5.23 of purification factor were gained using liquid biphasic flotation. The conclusions and future work of this research work are further described in the last chapter of the thesis.

Item Type:	Thesis (University of Nottingham only) (PhD)
Supervisors:	Show, Pau Loke Yap, Yee Jiun
Keywords:	sonoprocessing, biomolecules extraction, microalgae, triphasic systems
Subjects:	T Technology > TP Chemical technology
Faculties/Schools:	University of Nottingham, Malaysia > Faculty of Science and Engineering — Engineering > Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering
Item ID:	63848
Depositing User:	Chia, Shir Reen
Date Deposited:	24 Feb 2021 04:40
Last Modified:	24 Feb 2021 04:40
URI:	https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/63848

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