Scientists from Elea, DIL and Algae Holland B.V have published a paper on bio-refinery of Chlorella sorokiniana with pulsed electric field pre-treatment.
The aim of this work was to investigate the potential of PEF technology for green extraction of microalgal pigments and lipids from fresh Chlorella sorokiniana suspensions. Efficiencies of PEF treatment and different solvent systems application to C. sorokiniana were compared to efficiencies of untreated biomass extraction. Differences in chlorophyll extraction of untreated and PEF treated C. sorokiniana were only seen at short extraction times. Beneficial PEF-effect was minimised for long-time extractions of larger algae quantities where yields aligned. Extraction attempts on C. sorokiniana lipids did not show increased extractability after PEF treatment, which underlined the statement of PEF representing a rather ineffective disruption method for microalgae
holding rigid cell walls.
The work was funded as a part of eAlgae.2 project (project number 2-4.2): “Treatment of algae with electric pulsed fields (PEF)” in a framework of FOOD2020 Phase II program of Interreg V between Germany and the Netherlands.