Microbial biotechnology generates functional ingredients for food, feed, nutraceutical, therapeutic, and cosmetic applications. However, extracting and purifying these compounds in their native form remains a challenge due to the harshness of current approaches, as well as their high economic and environmental costs. To enable these technologies, a complete rethink of downstream processing is required. Using external fields, cold plasma, and supercritical fluids, biomass processing could be simplified and intensified. Despite progress, a clear understanding and overview of the strengths and weaknesses of these technologies are lacking. The present review highlights the potential of these technologies, as well as their limitations, while proposing new strategies to overcome these and advance the next generation of multiproduct microbial and microalgal biorefineries.
Lambangsari et al. (Sun,) studied this question.