LEPABE-Laboratory for Process Engineering, Environment, Biotechnology and Energy, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal.
FEUP-Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Rua Dr Roberto Frias, 4200-264 Porto, Portugal.
Molecules. 2021 Jan 26;26(3):641. doi: 10.3390/molecules26030641.
One of the main goals of Mankind is to ensure food system sustainability-including management of land, soil, water, and biodiversity. Microalgae accordingly appear as an innovative and scalable alternative source in view of the richness of their chemical profiles. In what concerns lipids in particular, microalgae can synthesize and accumulate significant amounts of fatty acids, a great fraction of which are polyunsaturated; this makes them excellent candidates within the framework of production and exploitation of lipids by various industrial and health sectors, either as bulk products or fine chemicals. Conventional lipid extraction methodologies require previous dehydration of microalgal biomass, which hampers economic feasibility due to the high energy demands thereof. Therefore, extraction of lipids directly from wet biomass would be a plus in this endeavor. Supporting processes and methodologies are still limited, and most approaches are empirical in nature-so a deeper mechanistic elucidation is a must, in order to facilitate rational optimization of the extraction processes. Besides circumventing the current high energy demands by dehydration, an ideal extraction method should be selective, sustainable, efficient, harmless, and feasible for upscale to industrial level. This review presents and discusses several pretreatments incurred in lipid extraction from wet microalga biomass, namely recent developments and integrated processes. Unfortunately, most such developments have been proven at bench-scale only-so demonstration in large facilities is still needed to confirm whether they can turn into competitive alternatives.
人类的主要目标之一是确保粮食系统的可持续性，包括土地、土壤、水和生物多样性的管理。微藻因此作为一种创新和可扩展的替代资源出现，鉴于其丰富的化学特征。特别是在脂质方面，微藻可以合成和积累大量的脂肪酸，其中很大一部分是多不饱和的；这使得它们成为各种工业和健康领域生产和利用脂质的优秀候选者，无论是作为大宗商品还是精细化学品。传统的脂质提取方法需要对微藻生物质进行预先脱水，由于其高能量需求，这使得其在经济上不可行。因此，直接从湿生物质中提取脂质将是一个优势。支持性的工艺和方法仍然有限，而且大多数方法都是经验性的，因此，必须进行更深入的机制阐明，以便于合理优化提取工艺。除了通过脱水来避免当前的高能量需求外，理想的提取方法还应该是选择性的、可持续的、高效的、无害的，并且可以扩展到工业规模。本文综述了从湿微藻生物质中提取脂质所涉及的几种预处理方法，即最近的发展和综合工艺。不幸的是，大多数这样的发展仅在实验室规模上得到了证明，因此仍需要在大型设施中进行演示，以确认它们是否可以成为具有竞争力的替代方法。
