Abstract
BackgroundIn today’s consumer perception of industrial processes and food production, aspects like food quality, human health, environmental safety, and energy security have become the keywords. Therefore, much effort has been extended toward adding value to biowastes of agri-food industries through biorefinery processing approaches. This study focused, for the first time, on the valorization of tomato by-products of a Tunisian industry for the recovery of value-added compounds using biorefinery cascade processing.ResultsThe process integrated supercritical CO2 extraction of carotenoids within the oil fractions from tomato seeds (TS) and tomato peels (TP), followed by a batch isolation of protein from the residues. The remaining lignocellulosic matter from both fractions was then submitted to a liquid hot water (LHW) hydrolysis. Supercritical CO2 experiments extracted 5.79% oleoresin, 410.53 mg lycopene/kg, and 31.38 mg β-carotene/kg from TP and 26.29% oil, 27.84 mg lycopene/kg, and 5.25 mg β-carotene/kg from TS, on dry weights. Protein extraction yields, nearing 30% of the initial protein contents equal to 13.28% in TP and 39.26% in TS, revealed that TP and TS are a rich source of essential amino acids. LHW treatment run at 120–200 °C, 50 bar for 30 min showed that a temperature of 160 °C was the most convenient for cellulose and hemicellulose hydrolysis from TP and TS, while keeping the degradation products low.ConclusionsResults indicated that tomato by-products are not only a green source of lycopene-rich oleoresin and tomato seed oil (TSO) and of protein with good nutritional quality but also a source of lignocellulosic matter with potential for bioethanol production. This study would provide an important reference for the concept and the feasibility of the cascade fractionation of valuable compounds from tomato industrial by-products.Graphical abstractSchema of biorefinery cascade processing of tomato industrial by-products toward isolation of valuable fractions.
Highlights
In today’s consumer perception of industrial processes and food production, aspects like food quality, human health, environmental safety, and energy security have become the keywords
Supercritical CO2 extraction The first step in the biorefinery cascade approach aimed to extract the carotenoids within oleoresin and oil from ground tomato peels (TP) and seeds (TS), respectively, using supercritical CO2
The yield of tomato seed oil (TSO) extracted in the present study was found to be much higher compared to that found in the study of Eller et al [39]
Summary
In today’s consumer perception of industrial processes and food production, aspects like food quality, human health, environmental safety, and energy security have become the keywords. There was a current upsurge concerning carotenoid extraction from tomato peels regarding their significant role in human health by acting as biological antioxidants [16] In this context, tomatoes were shown to be the major source of dietary lycopene whose concentrations vary from 430 to 2950 mg/kg, on dry basis, with tomato peels containing about five times more lycopene than tomato pulp [17]. Based on the fiber analysis of tomato industrial peel by-product, Toscano et al [8] showed that hemicellulose, cellulose, and lignin dry mass fractions corresponded to 4.8, 22.5, and 46.9%, respectively This structural composition encouraged Toscano et al [8] to use this processing residue for the production of a solid biofuel with energy properties similar to those of coal through a torrefaction treatment. Del Campo et al [20] found between 40.3 and 50.2% of soluble sugars by weight in the hydrolysate after hydrothermal treatment of tomato residues at temperatures from 100 to 130 °C and reaction times from 5 to 30 min
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