Adding Value to Wastewater Bioremediation by Lipid Extraction from Oedogonium intermedium

Abstract

Macroalgae bioremediation is a potential way to deal with the escalating problem of arsenic contamination. The results of this study demonstrate that the arsenic content in wastewater treated by Oedogonium intermedium decreases by 32% from 1.13 ± 0.01 to 0.77 ± 0.03 ppb. Then, supercritical carbon dioxide (SC‐CO2) extraction was employed to isolate lipids from O. intermedium. Response surface methodology based on the Box‐Behnken design was carried out to optimize the SC‐CO2 extraction conditions of pressure (200–400 bar), temperature (30–50 °C), and extraction time (30–90 min). The optimal conditions from the model are predicted as 301.95 bar, 41.3 °C, and 30.53 min with 3.24 % lipid yield, 61.30 % PUFA ratio, and 0.106 µg g−1 of arsenic content, respectively.