Efficient and environmental friendly extraction and purification of lutein from wet microalgae chlorella vulgaris

In this paper, a method composed of ultrasonic-assisted ethanol extraction, saponification, and hexane extraction for lutein recovery was developed. The extraction process was optimized by using single factorial experiment design and response surface methodology. Central Composite Design was applied to evaluate the effects of three independent variables. The optimum ethanol extraction conditions were as follows: extraction temperature 51.07°C, extraction time 11.95 min, and ratio of liquid to material 514.78:1 mL/g. Under optimal conditions, the experimental lutein yield was 204.70±3.68 mg/g, which corresponded well with the predicted yield. And then, 4% KOH solution was added by the ratio of 1:10 to the crude extracts for 20 min under room temperature. Finally, hexane was used to recover the lutein from the reaction mixture. These results indicate that this method has the potential to be a scaleable and industrially applicable technique for lutein production.