Separation and purification of phycocyanin from Spirulina sp. using a membrane process

摘要

The highest purity ratio of phycocyanin extract was obtained when fresh biomass was used as raw material. The crude extract was purified by membrane process using microfiltration and ultrafiltration. Membrane of pore sizes 5μm, at feed flow rate of 150mLmin~(-1), permeate flux of 58.5Lh~(-1)m~(-2) was selected for coarse filtration and membrane with pore size 0.8/0.2μm at the flow rate of 100mLmin~(-1), permeate flux of 336Lh~(-1)m~(-2) was selected for fine filtration, giving phycocyanin recovery of 88.6% and 82.9%, respectively. For ultrafiltration, membrane with MWCO at 50kDa, 69kPa and 75mLmin~(-1) of flow rate with a mean permeate flux 26.8Lh~(-1)m~(-2) and a retention rate of 99% was found to be optimal. Under these filtration conditions, food grade phycocyanin with the purity around 1.0 containing c-phycocyanin as the major component was obtained.