Improved yield of β-carotene from microalgae Spirulina platensis using ultrasound assisted extraction

Abstract

Microalgae Spirulina has been considered as the rich nutrition microorganism including β-carotene. The β-carotene plays an important role in human’s body as an antioxidant. The extraction of this compound from microalgae by using conventional method resulted low yield and required longer extraction time. The objective of this research was to investigate the use of ultrasound irradiation to assist extraction of β-carotene in order to accelerate the extraction process and increase the yield. The experiment was conducted by varying extraction variables such as solvent volume (20, 40, 60 ml) and extraction time (5, 15, 25 minutes) on a fixed temperature of 40°C. The result showed that the optimum condition was at ultrasound frequency of 40kHz, extraction time of 25 minutes and ratio of biomass to solvent 1:6, while the maximum yield was 1.38 μg/mL.