Drying and extraction of astaxanthin from pink shrimp waste (Farfantepenaeus subtilis): the applicability of spouted beds

Abstract In this study, the spouted bed drying technique was used to obtain powder from shrimp wastes, with high quality for subsequent extraction of astaxanthin using vegetable oil, as alternative to organic solvents. Shrimp waste paste was dried in three inlet air temperatures (70, 80 and 90 °C), and air velocity used in the experiments was 100% over minimum spouting velocity. The minimum spouting, the velocities were 1.23, 1.33 and 1.39 m/s, for temperatures of 90, 100 and 110 °C respectively. The powder obtained in this work shows properties comparable to of the commercial products, indicating that the spouted bed is an alternative technique to obtain powdered products with quality good, at low cost and suitable for subsequent extraction of astaxanthin. The extractions of astaxanthin from shrimp waste were performed using palm olein at three different temperatures (50, 60, and 70 °C). At these conditions, maximum extraction of astaxanthin was 29.814µg/g of dried waste. The extraction kinetics were modeled using a simplified mass transfer kinetic model which showed a good agreement (0.9685