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Species variation in the effects of dewatering treatment on macroalgae

Gallagher, Joe A.; Turner, Lesley B.; Adams, Jessica M.M.; Barrento, Sara; Dyer, Philip W.; Theodorou, Michael K.

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Authors

Joe A. Gallagher

Lesley B. Turner

Jessica M.M. Adams

Sara Barrento

Michael K. Theodorou



Abstract

Seaweeds can be a valuable resource for biorefinery and biotechnology applications, but their high water content is a recurrent problem and one of the key bottlenecks for their sustainable use. Treatments to increase dry matter content of the kelp Laminaria digitata were recently described by the authors. However macroalgae are an extremely diverse group of organisms and compositional variation between species may influence the effects of particular treatments. In this study, potential dewatering treatments including drying, osmotic media, and the application of both organic and mineral acids all followed by screw-pressing have been tested on two other species of kelp (Laminaria hyperborea and Saccharina latissima) and a red seaweed (Palmaria palmata). Conditions that dewatered these species were identified and the data have been combined with the previous results for L. digitata. There were significant differences between species across all the traits of interest. However dewatering was highly dependent on specific interactions with both treatment and season of collection. Nevertheless, the dry matter content of brown seaweeds was widely and successfully increased by air drying or acid treatment followed by screw-pressing. The results for P. palmata were quite different, particularly with regard to juice production. For this species, acid treatment did not result in dewatering, but dry matter content could be increased by screw-pressing immediately after harvest. Together the data presented here demonstrate that dewatering pre-treatments need to be specific for the type of seaweed to be processed; important knowledge for the future use of this sustainable biomass resource.

Citation

Gallagher, J. A., Turner, L. B., Adams, J. M., Barrento, S., Dyer, P. W., & Theodorou, M. K. (2018). Species variation in the effects of dewatering treatment on macroalgae. Journal of Applied Phycology, 30(4), 2305-2316. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10811-018-1420-7

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Feb 6, 2018
Online Publication Date Feb 20, 2018
Publication Date Aug 1, 2018
Deposit Date Mar 2, 2018
Publicly Available Date Mar 2, 2018
Journal Journal of Applied Phycology
Print ISSN 0921-8971
Electronic ISSN 1573-5176
Publisher Springer
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 30
Issue 4
Pages 2305-2316
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s10811-018-1420-7

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Advance online version © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.





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