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Stability of Valuable Components during Wet and Dry storage

Book Contribution - Chapter

Microalgae contain several valuable components, such as nutritionally interesting fatty acids and antioxidants. Although muchis known about these components in literature, the importance of their stability is often underestimated. However, it hasalready been shown that storage of microalgal biomass can pose different stability problems, the most important onesbeing microbiological problems and lipolysis and oxidation of lipids. A crucial step during processing is the drying step,since this reduces the water activity and thus improves the stability of the lipids. However, the drying technique andprocess parameters being used have a great influence on the stability of the dry product. It has been shown that endogenicantioxidants in microalgae protect the lipids against oxidation, but it also has to be taken into account that this protectioncan get lost during processing, for example, during biomass drying and oil purification. Further research on stability ofvaluable components is thus necessary before high quality microalgal products can be produced and applied in differentindustries.
Book: Handbook of Marine Microalgae
Pages: 81 - 89
ISBN:978-0-12-800776-1
Publication year:2015