Obtención y purificación de Ficoeritrina mediante cromatografía de adsorción en lecho expandidoescalado del proceso, caracterización fisicoquímica y aplicación como colorante natural

Resum

In this Thesis a large and scaleable method for purification of phycoerithrins from microalgae has been developed. Phycoerithrins are extracted from the cells by osmotic shock and separated by passing the centrifuged cell suspension through an expanded bed adsorption chromatography column using Streamline-DEAE as adsorbent. The eluted phycoerithrins rich solution is finally purified by packed-bed chromatography using DEAE-cellulose. The operation of EBAC is optimized on a small scale using a column of 15 mm internal diameter. The EBAC process is then scaled up by increasing the column I.D. (15, 25, 40, 60, 90 and 150mm). The purification steps are monitored using SDS-PAGE and the purity of recovered phycoerithrins is confirmed by absorption and emission spectroscopy and RP-HPLC. Results show that EBAC method is a scalable technology that allows large quantities of phycoerithrins to be obtained without product loss, maintaining a high protein recovery while reducing both processing cost and time. So, the potential of phycoerithrins as natural colorants is demonstrated using different food and drink comercial products.