An Ounce of Prevention from a Ton of Tomatoes

Abstract

Tomato processors enhancing the health of consumers with their nutrient-rich tomato extract soon may enhance the health of their communities as they adopt a new, green technique for producing the precious substance. A team of researchers from the University of Florida (UF) has developed an extraction method using supercritical carbon dioxide (CO2), which may provide a cleaner way to get more extract from more tomatoes. Companies that produce tomato extract and pure lycopene (the carotenoid that gives tomatoes their red color) typically use chemical solvents to draw the compounds from tomatoes. One of the most commonly used solvents is ethyl acetate. Although nontoxic, ethyl acetate is highly flammable and must be removed from the extract through distillation. “The advantage of supercritical extraction is that we use carbon dioxide,” says Murat Balaban, a professor of food engineering at the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences and leader of the research team. “Neither the remaining tomato nor the extract need to be cleaned of solvent as in the case of ethyl acetate, because carbon dioxide . . . is easily separated from them.” Supercritical extraction does not produce CO2, which is associated with global warming; it only uses it. “This is another wonderful example of how people are using green chemistry to shift from traditional technology,” says Paul Anastas, director of the Green Chemistry Institute in Washington, D.C. “Nothing is as innocuous as carbon dioxide.”