Semi-Refined Carrageenan Production from Cold Water Red Seaweeds

Semi-refined carrageenan (SRC) is a minimally processed form of carrageenan that requires less energy to make, but has the same food efficacy as the traditional, more highly refined form. Only Eucheuma(tropical red seaweeds) weeds, which yield strong gelling kappa and iota types of carrageenan have been successfully used to produce marketable SRC. To date, Gigartina and Chondrus (cold water red seaweeds) weeds, which yield commercially important weaker gelling kappa-2 and non-gelling lambda types of carrageenan, have not lent themselves to SRC processing. Our project seeks to use novel process chemistry to produce marketable kappa-2 and lambda carrageenans from cold water red seaweeds using the less expensive and less energy intensive SRC method.