A novel approach for microalgal cell disruption and bioproducts extraction using non-thermal atmospheric plasma (NTAP) technology and chitosan flocculation

[Display omitted] •Non-thermal atmospheric plasma (NTAP) efficiently disrupts microalgae cells.•Maximum cell disruption efficiency 75% was achieved at 12 kV voltage.•Adding 100 mg/L of chitosan could efficiently recover the release bioproducts.•NTAP was found as economical low energy consuming method (59.4 MJ/kg dry mass). Microalgal cell disruption and bio-product extraction still remain as major challenging steps for biomass downstream processing. In this study, a sustainable approach of using non-thermal atmospheric plasma (NTAP) and chitosan flocculation was developed for microalgal cell disruption and bio-product recovery from wet C. Sorokiniana. For this purpose, the performance of NTAP treatment for cell disruption and extraction of protein, carbohydrate and lipid was investigated by using different applied voltages (8–16 kV). Then, the application of chitosan on recovery of bioproducts from the culture medium was evaluated. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) analysis, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) images were used to analyze the flocculation mechanism and for flocs characterization. Additionally, the energy consumption and efficiency of the NTAP process were analyzed. According to the NTAP results, the highest cell disruption of 75% was achieved under the applied voltage of 16 kV. However, in the case of bioproducts extraction, the optimal applied voltage was 12 kV which was able to yield 41, 24 and 36 (%CDW) of protein, carbohydrate and lipid, respectively. Adding 100 mg/L chitosan efficiently recovered the released protein (65%) and carbohydrate (85%) from culture medium, while the highest lipid recovery (60%) was achieved at 150 mg/L chitosan addition. This study proved that the utilization of NTAP and chitosan treatment can be considered as a promising approach for valuable products extraction from microalgae.