Fractionation of phycocyanin and carbohydrate from Spirulina platensis using ionic liquid-based aqueous two-phase system

Microalgae have gained considerable attention due to their high-value biomolecules and potential applications in the pharmaceutical, food, medical and cosmeceutical field. However, the conventional biorefinery process of microalgae are costly, energy-intensive, and time-consuming. Aqueous two-phase system (ATPS) has emerged as a potential technique for the separation and fractionation of biomolecules in the biorefinery field. This study proposed the application of ionic liquid (IL) based ATPS for the fractionation of high-value phycocyanin and carbohydrates from a crude extract of <i>Spirulina platensis.</i>The biomass was first lysed by a high-speed homogenization with a solid to liquid ratio (S/L) of 1:10 and an operation time of 5 min to achieve optimum yields of multiple products. Next, the feasibility of several IL-based ATPS with phosphate/citrate buffer was evaluated by investigating the effects of cation, anion, and alkyl chain’s length of ILs. Among the IL-based ATPS, the system comprising of 1-butyl-1-methylpyrrolidinium dicyanamide and citrate buffer demonstrated the optimum phycocyanin extraction efficiency of 83.26 ± 0.05% at the top phase and a concurrent recovery of 73.89±0.06% carbohydrate at the bottom phase. In this work, the IL-based ATPS performed better than conventional polymer-based ATPS. This work suggests that IL-based ATPS allows efficient fractionation of phycocyanin and carbohydrates.