Extraction of laminarin from Saccharina latissima seaweed using cross-flow filtration

Abstract

Laminarin is a low-molecular-weight polysaccharide found in seaweed (kelp), often in equal concentrations to that in the commercially important hydrocolloid alginate. However, while alginate can be easily recovered by dissolution followed by acid precipitation, for laminarin, there is no such straightforward way of recovering it. Laminarin can be used as dietary fiber and, if efficiently extracted, it may be used for functional food/feed applications and as a component in plant defense stimulants for agriculture. One way of concentrating laminarin from dilute solutions is to press the solution through ultrafine membranes that the molecules cannot pass through. When alginate is extracted, an acid pretreatment step is used and the dilute acid residue from that process also contains laminarin. We used cross-flow filtration to concentrate laminarin from Saccharina latissima, retrieving it from the dilute acid solution of the acid pretreatment of an alginate extraction. Three ceramic membranes with 5, 15, and 50 kDa molecular weight cutoffs were used, and the pressure, temperature, and feed velocity were altered to reveal which parameters controlled the flow through the membrane and how efficiently laminarin was concentrated. The effects on laminarin extraction for fresh vs. frozen biomass were evaluated showing that frozen biomass releases more laminarin with a similar biomass homogenization technique. Thermal and microbial degradation of the feed components was studied during the course of the filtrations, showing that microbial degradation can affect the laminarin concentration, while the temperature of the process ~ 65 °C had little impact on laminarin. The techniques used to monitor the components in the feed and permeate during filtration were nuclear magnetic resonance, 1H-NMR, and size exclusion chromatography. The filtrations were performed in a pilot-size filtration unit with ceramic membranes (ZrO2/TiO2, TiO2-Al2O support, 0.08 m2). To be able to operate without quick membrane fouling, the most important parameter was to have a high liquid velocity over the membrane, 4.7 m s−1. A good technique to concentrate laminarin was to prefilter it through a 50-kDa membrane using 2 bar liquid pressure and to concentrate it over a 5-kDa membrane using 5-bar liquid pressure. With these settings, the liquid flux through the filter became 60–80 and 30–40 L m−2 h−1 over the 50-kDa and 5-kDa membrane.