Cell-wall disruption and characterization of phycocyanin from microalgae: Spirulina platensis using Catalytic ozonation

Abstract

Spirulina is one key material in pharmacy and nutraceutical industries. The cell-wall disruption of Spirulina have been studied for many years, resulting in diverse methodologies with a range of yields and grades of quality. In this paper we report the cell-wall disruption and characterization of phycocyanin from Spirulina platensis using catalytic ozonation. Various parameters of cell-wall disruption such as flow ozone and catalytic time of the reaction were varied to identify the optimum ones. We obtained the phycocyanin with homogeneous size distribution and high ratio could be obtained at flow ozone of 4 LPM, catalytic time of 1 minute and 89.31% cell-wall disruption yield with 90% phycocyanin yield. The method reported here is very attractive and potential for production of large scale phycocyanin from microalgae for industrial applications.