Macroalgae have been commercially exploited as food and for the production of phycocolloids, but they also contain compounds with potential in pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, cosmetic, chemical and energetic applications. The biorefinery concept applied to seaweed facilitates the extraction of different constituents ensuring full utilization of resources and generating few residues through a succession of steps. Seaweed biorefineries are less advanced than those based on terrestrial biomass and the design of efficient processes requires further study. This review presents practical successful examples to obtain two or more commercially valuable components from red seaweeds. The selected processes consist on cascading stages of both conventional and alternative techniques to illustrate different possible valorization strategies.
Keywords: bioactives; biorefinery; cascade processing; energy; phycocolloids; red seaweed.