Pressurized limonene as an alternative bio-solvent for the extraction of lipids from marine microorganisms.

A fast and green process for the isolation of high value lipids from different marine microorganisms is presented involving the use of limonene, a green biodegradable solvent, as an alternative to traditional hexane extraction. The optimized process is based on pressurized liquid extraction (PLE) at 200 °C for 15 min using limonene:ethanol (1:1, v/v) as extracting solvent. Under these conditions, lipids were extracted from different microalgae such as Spirulina, Phormidium, Anabaena and Stigeoclonium and their composition in terms of fatty acids were studied by using a Fast-GC–MS method and compared with the original content in the raw material. The extraction method provided the best results in terms of extraction yield for Spirulina, meanwhile the highest amount of ω-3 fatty acids were obtained from Stigeoclonium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]