abstract
- The harvesting steps are still one of the major economic bottlenecks in microalgae-based bioprocesses accounting 20¿30% of the overall production costs. In the present study, chitosan aided flocculation was optimized for harvesting of red microalga Porphyridium cruentum by Plackett¿Burman design followed by response surface methodology. A statistically significant quadratic response surface model was obtained (R2 = 0.9639, p = 0.0003) which indicates highly significance of operational parameters in relation to flocculation efficiency. Under optimized conditions, a high biomass recovery (97.0%) was achieved at a low chitosan dosage, using a sedimentation time of 5 min, an initial biomass concentration of 0.9 g/L, and an agitation speed of 75 rpm. Unlike most previous studies focused on green microalgae, this work provides species-specific insights into chitosan-mediated harvesting of Porphyridium cruentum , contributing to a better understanding of flocculation behavior in red microalgae systems.