LAUSR

Due to increasing demand of natural antioxidants for pharmaceutical, food and cosmetic applications, extraction of polyphenols from natural resources has received enormous attention. In this regard, microalgae biomass exhibits great potential for target bioactive compounds accumulation. Conventionally, petroleum-derived volatile organic solvents (VOCs) and water have been used to recover polyphenols from biomass; however, VOCs are hazardous, nonenvironmentally friendly solvents while water suffers from coextraction of other impurities. Therefore, the goal of this work is to evaluate renewable deep eutectic solvents (DES) as alternative to conventional solvents for recovering polyphenols from microalgal biomass. In particular, Chlorella vulgaris was subjected to solvent extraction using 12 DES systems composed of choline chloride (ChCl) and polyols including glycerol (Gly), ethylene glycol (EG), 1,3-propanediol (PDO) and 1,4-butanediol (BDO) and two benchmark conventional solvents, namely ethyl acetate and...