Study On The Solvents Combined With Different Techniques For Phycocyanin Extraction From Dry Biomass Of Spirulina Platensis

Abstract

Phycocyanin is a pigment-protein complex synthesized by blue-green microalgae Spirulina platensis, which is used mainly in pharmaceutical and food industry as their antioxidant and anti-cancer activities. In the world, the phycocyanin content in spirulina has been extracted at 7% while the figure for domestic enterprises is about 3.5-4%. In Vietnam, the highest content of phycocyanin extracted was lower than 5%. The limitation came from the extraction method as the cell wall of spirulina is composed of four resistant layers. The objective of this study was to obtain the highest yield of phycocyanin under different extraction methods combined with different solvents. Methods used in this study for phycocyanin quantification were using a spectrophotometer at wavelengths 652nm and 615nm. Phycocyanin is an important commercially available blue food colourant. This report studied various phycocyanin extraction methods as homogeneous, ultrasound, cold maceration and freeze-thaw extraction methods from dry biomass of Spirulina platensis. Three different solvents i.e. distilled water, 1.5% CaCl2 (w/v) solution and 0.1M phosphate buffer were applied as the extraction medium. As a result, ultrasound extraction method with 1.5% CaCl2 (w/v) solution provided vivid blue colour, a higher amount of phycocyanin (70.08 mg/g) higher than previous studies, high of purity (3.40), total phenolic content (182.05%), and maximum antioxidant activity as compared to other extraction methods.