Project
Protein extraction from red seaweed
In this project, enzymes are used to extract proteins from the red seaweed Palmaria palmata by disrupting its cell wall. To improve the extraction of the proteins, other technologies like: ultrasound, microwave and high pressures can be coupled to the enzymatic extraction. After extraction, a complete downstream process, involving membrane filtrations, to isolate the proteins will be developed and the functionality of proteins assessed.
Background
Biorefinery of seaweed in recent years have attracted attention, by the wide variety of compounds of interest, like proteins. Innovative technologies, such enzyme-assisted extraction, has been studied for the extraction of protein from the red seaweed Palmaria palmata. Despite scientific and technological advances, there are currently unresolved challenges, such as the complete integration of the process and the sole use of enzymes that will not degrade proteins into peptides.
Project description
The project involves the development of an integrated biorefinery process to obtain functional proteins from the red macroalgae Palmaria palmata through enzyme-assisted extraction. The process will consist of enzyme assisted extraction using readily available commercial enzymes and membrane filtrations for fractionation. The main goal is to have a developed process at pilot-scale at AlgaePARC to assess its techno-economic feasibility.
This project will be divided into six parts. The first two involve trial runs at pilot-scale to identify bottlenecks of the process followed by downscaling to lab-scale for optimizing the process, respectively. Bottlenecks of the process are going to be identified and solved, not only by optimization experiments but also through the hyphenation of enzyme-assisted extraction with emerging technologies in the third part. These technologies, ultrasound and high hydrostatic pressures, have been applied in conjunction with enzyme-assisted extraction to improve the performance of the extraction of biomolecules. The goal of this work package is to assess not only the enhancement of the extraction but also its impact on the feasibility.
The interconnection between the extraction and the fractionation unit operations will be dealt with in the fourth part. The developed integrated process will be scaled-up and optimized in the fifth part. And the sixth and final package deals with the assessment of the techno-functional properties of the protein.