A look into Phaffia rhodozyma biorefinery: From the recovery and fractionation of carotenoids, lipids and proteins to the sustainable manufacturing of biologically active bioplastics

• Published in: Bioresource technology Vol. 362; p. 127785
• Main Authors: Mussagy, Cassamo U., Remonatto, Daniela, Picheli, Flavio P., Paula, Ariela V., Herculano, Rondinelli D., Santos-Ebinuma, Valéria C., Farias, Renan L., S. D. Onishi, Bruno, J. L. Ribeiro, Sidney, F. B. Pereira, Jorge, Pessoa Jr, Adalberto
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01-10-2022
• Subjects: Astaxanthin; Bioplastics; Biorefinery; Biosolvents; Phaffia rhodozyma; β-carotene; Biosolvents; Phaffia rhodozyma; β-carotene; Biorefinery; Bioplastics; Astaxanthin
• ISSN: 0960-8524; 1873-2976
• DOI: 10.1016/j.biortech.2022.127785

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•Phaffia rhodozyma was evaluated as a potential source of bioproducts.•Recovery and fractionation of astaxanthin, β-carotene, proteins and lipids.•Integration of a sequential operations in a biorefinery approach.•Carotenoids to produce sustainable bioactive plastics.
Carotenoids over-producing yeast has become a focus of interest of the biorefineries, in which the integration of the bioproduction with the following downstream processing units for the recovery and purification of carotenoids and other value-added byproducts is crucial to improve the sustainability and profitability of the overall bioprocess. Aiming the future implementation of Phaffia rhodozyma-based biorefineries, in this work, an integrative process for fractionation of intracellular compounds from P. rhodozyma biomass using non-hazardous bio-based solvents was developed. After one-extraction step, the total amount of astaxanthin, β-carotene, lipids and proteins recovered was 63.11 µg/gDCW, 42.81 µg/gDCW, 53.75 mg/gDCW and 10.93 mg/g, respectively. The implementation of sequential back-extraction processes and integration with saponification and precipitation operations allowed the efficient fractionation and recovery (% w/w) of astaxanthin (∼72.5 %), β-carotene ∼90.17 %), proteins (21.04 %) and lipids (23.72 %). After fractionation, the manufacture of carotenoids-based products was demonstrated, through the mixture of carotenoids-rich extracts with bacterial cellulose to obtain biologically active bioplastics.