Equilibrium Modeling of Astaxanthin Extraction from <i>Haematococcus pluvialis</i>

Astaxanthin is a natural antioxidant, and the highest content of this compound is found in Haematococcus pluvialis microalgae. Microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) is one of the environmentally friendly extraction methods and has many advantages. This study aims to investigate the extraction of astaxanthin through the MAE method using various solvents. Several equilibrium models were proposed to describe this solid-liquid equilibrium. The solid-liquid extraction equilibrium parameters were determined by minimizing the sum of squares of errors (SSE), in which equilibrium constants were needed for scaling up purposes. Previously, the microalgae were pretreated with HCl to soften their cell walls thus improving the extraction recovery. In this study, dichloromethane, acetone, methanol, and ethanol were used as the solvents for the extraction process. The astaxanthin concentration was determined by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and spectrophotometry. Astaxanthin was found to attain equilibrium at 57.42% recovery in a single-step extraction. Thus, several steps were required in sequence to obtain optimum recovery. The experimental data were fitted to three equilibrium models, namely, Henry, Freundlich, and Langmuir models. The experimental data were well fitted to all the models for the extraction in dichloromethane, methanol, ethanol and acetone, as evident from a similar SSE value for each model.