Supercritical technology in the reverse engineering context: formulation of new products from citrus agro-industrial residues

Abstract

Food waste is one of the greatest actual global problems. Around one third of the world's food production is lost along the production, distribution, and consumption. In the case of fruits, this waste reaches 50%. In this context, processing agro-industrial by-products, following the principles of circular economy and reverse engineering, is clear trend for the future of food industry. The Laboratory of High Pressure in Food Engineering (LAPEA) has focused its activities on the investigation of high-pressure processes to obtain value-added products from natural sources. Results have been showing that food industry by-products are important sources of bioactive compounds, and high-pressure technologies are viable alternatives for the recovery and purification of these compounds by means of methods that are clean and harmless to the environment and to the product itself. Nevertheless, the technical and economic viability of such processes depend on their intensification and integration between themselves and to other operations. This project deals with the recovery of residues from the citrus chain, one of the most important in the State of São Paulo. The citrus' rinds and essential oils are rich in compounds with nutritional, pharmaceutic, and technologic potential such as fibers, pectin, terpenes, phenolics and pigments. High-pressure processing techniques like supercritical fluid and pressurized liquid extraction, fractionation by pressure reduction, adsorption, membrane separation and supercritical drying will be performed in integrated ways to obtain products with potential application in the formulation of processed foods. The processing conditions will be evaluated in terms of yield of target compounds, products' physical and chemical properties, processing kinetics and economic viability. Applications in food product formulation will be searched in partnerships with research groups and industries. (AU)