Spirulina Colour Separation - PROCESS VIDEO

Spirulina called “blue-green algae”, contains two colour pigments: a green pigment named chlorophyll and a blue pigment named phycocyanin. Phycocyanin is the main active compound in spirulina. It has powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.

In addition, it is very simple to extract it! Why? Because phycocyanins are water-soluble, which chlorophylls are not. Therefore, It is easy to separate them by mixing some spirulina powder in water and filtering them with a coffee filter.

NOTE - The process is quite slow. I managed to filter only about two litres in one week using few containers for filtering at the same time.
I needed large amounts of dye to make a dye bath for bacterial cellulose.

Other thing to take into consideration -phycocyanin has quite an overwhelming smell, therefore I am considering to introduce essential oils into the dye bath. Oils that could support the anti-inflammatory qualities of the phycocyanin and also bacterial cellulose.

My further experiments with the spirulina dye will be reviewed in the future posts.