A look into Phaffia rhodozyma biorefinery: From the recovery and fractionation of carotenoids, lipids and proteins to the sustainable manufacturing of biologically active bioplastics

• Phaffia rhodozyma was evaluated as a potential source of bioproducts. • Recovery and fractionation of astaxanthin, β-carotene, proteins and lipids. • Integration of a sequential operations in a biorefinery approach. • Carotenoids to produce sustainable bioactive plastics. Carotenoids over-producing yeasts has become a focus of interest of the biorefineries, in which the integration of the bioproduction with the following downstream processing units for the recovery and purification of carotenoids and other value-added byproducts is crucial to improve the sustainability and profitability of the overall bioprocess. Aiming the future implementation of P. rhodozyma -based biorefineries, in this work, an integrative process for fractionation of intracellular compounds from Phaffia rhodozyma biomass using non-hazardous bio-based solvents was developed. After one-extraction step, the total amount of astaxanthin, β-carotene, lipids and proteins recovered was 63.11 µg/g DCW , 42.81 µg/g DCW , 53.75 mg/g DCW and 10.93 mg/g, respectively. The implementation of sequential back-extraction processes and integration with saponification and precipitation operations allowed the efficient fractionation and recovery (% w/w) of astaxanthin (∼72.5%), β-carotene ∼90.17%), proteins (21.04%) and lipids (23.72%). After fractionation, the manufacture of carotenoids-based products was demonstrated, through the mixture of carotenoids-rich extracts with bacterial cellulose to obtain biologically active bioplastics.