Cell disruption pre-treatments towards an effective recovery of oil from Yarrowia lipolytica oleaginous yeast

The aim of this work was to evaluate the efficiency of different cell disruption techniques on oil extraction from Y. lipolytica oleaginous yeast. The techniques tested were mechanical expression (ME), moderate pulsed electric field assisted mechanical expression (MPEF-ME), high pulsed electric fields (HPEF), high voltage electrical discharges (HVED), ultrasound (US), and high-pressure homogenization (HPH). The impact of each cell disruption technique on fatty acid composition was investigated. Results show that the most efficient technique for Y. lipolytica disruption was HPH leading to the obtaining of 83.8 +/- 4.8% oil extraction yield, compared to only 19.8 +/- 0.5% for the control, without any pre-treatment. In terms of fatty acid composition, HVED induced significant changes in almost all the analyzed fatty acids, while US was the softest technique. HPH, ME, and MPEF-ME induced changes in the content of some fatty acids.