Adding Value to Wastewater Bioremediation by Lipid Extraction from Oedogonium intermedium

Abstract

Macroalgae bioremediation is a potential way to deal with the escalating problem of arsenic contamination. The results of this study demonstrate that the arsenic content in wastewater treated by Oedogonium intermedium decreases by 32% from 1.13 ± 0.01 to 0.77 ± 0.03 ppb. Then, supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) extraction was employed to isolate lipids from O. intermedium. Response surface methodology based on the Box-Behnken design was carried out to optimize the SC-CO2 extraction conditions of pressure (200–400 bar), temperature (30–50 °C), and extraction time (30–90 min). The optimal conditions from the model are predicted as 301.95 bar, 41.3 °C, and 30.53 min with 3.24 % lipid yield, 61.30 % PUFA ratio, and 0.106 µg g−1 of arsenic content, respectively.