Integration of high pressure extraction to separation operations for the recovery of by-products from fruit processing

Abstract

The Laboratory of High Pressure in Food Engineering (LAPEA) has focused its activities on the investigation of high pressure processes, with emphasis in supercritical technology for obtaining high value products from natural sources. Recent results have shown that by-products from the food industry are important sourced of bioactive compounds, and high pressure technologies are viable alternatives for the recovery and purification of those compounds through clean methods, which are also non-aggressive to the environment and the product itself. Nevertheless, the technical and economical viability of such processes depend of their intensification and integration with other operations usually present in an industrial processing line. In particular, one must envisage the development of separation steps that reduce the costs with product purification and solvent recovery. In this context the present proposal suggests the development of equipments to integrate, in a sequential way, high pressure processes (supercritical extraction and pressurized liquid extraction) to well-known separation operations (fractionation at high pressure, membrane filtration and adsorption). The performance of these processes in sequence depends of the adequacy of the proposed separation techniques to high pressure conditions, at which the components of the process equipment need to be more resistant. Each separation process will be applied to a specific by-product from fruit processing (high pressure fractionation for passion fruit bagasse, membrane filtration for grape marc and adsorption for orange residues). The integration of the processes will be evaluated in terms of yield, and physical, chemical and biological properties of the products, and their resulting applicability as ingredients in the formulation of food and other products. (AU)