Supercritical fluid extraction of lipids rich in DHA from Schizochytrium sp.

In this work supercritical fluids extraction (SFE) was applied on Schizochytrium algae biomass; the main focus was the application of different pretreatments and to study the influence of the pressure and temperature on lipids yields and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) concentration. The optimum conditions were obtained at 46.52 MPa and 76.85 °C using ethanol as a co-solvent (1.25 mL/min). After 30 min, 19.40 g of lipids/100 g of dry biomass and 7.98 g of DHA/100 g of dry biomass (45%) were produced. Grinding as pretreatment increased extraction efficiency from 30% to 76% and compared with other methods with solvents, obtained 34.29 g of lipids/100 g of dry biomass, and 17.51 g of DHA/100 g of dry biomass (51%). Our data show that the SFE with pretreatment allowed the extraction of high lipid yields and DHA concentrations in shorter extraction times. All rights reserved, Elsevier.