New approaches for the selective extraction of bioactive compounds employing bio-based solvents and pressurized green processes.

Solvent selection is a key factor in the development of processes for the extraction of bioactive compounds from natural sources such as algae. The aim of this work was the use of bio-based solvents for the selective extraction of fucoxanthin from P. tricornutum , using pressurized technologies. In this regards, the application of Hansen solubility approach reduced the list of candidate solvents for pressurized liquid extraction (PLE) to four: ethyl acetate, ethyl lactate, d-limonene and ethanol. The use of theoretical calculations narrowed the search of suitable solvents, thus making the process greener. Among the bio-based solvents proposed, d-limonene was the most selective, although it was not able to recover all the fucoxanthin present in the biomass unless a continuous extraction aided by supercritical CO 2 was used. The other three solvents tested showed good recoveries of fucoxanthin, but were less selective, following the decreasing order: ethyl acetate > ethyl lactate > ethanol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]