CLEAN PRODUCTION OF COMMERCIAL FREEZE-DRIED LIME POWDER FOR MEDICINAL HERB AND NUTRITIONAL HEALTH BENEFITS

Abstract

Abstract Lime (Citrus aurantiforia Swingle) is one of the important medicinal herbs used in Thailand’s traditional medicine. Lime and its derivatives including lime juice, lime peel and lime oil provides a whole range of medicinal properties. Especially, d-limonin from lime oil is suggested to have cancer-chemopreventive and anticarcinogenic properties, making it a potential candidate for industrial production for use as a medicinal herb. Technology has already been developed in which freeze-dried lime powder retains the same quality of fresh lime juice. Freezedried lime powder processing in this study includes lime powder processing, lime oil extraction and lime peel processing. The designed production process has considered the wastes from lime powder production process, which are the peels after squeezing and filtering off seeds. The waste utilization process has been divided into two sequential processes. The first one is lime oil extraction, done by squeezing oil from the lime peels and grinding the seeds, followed by steam extraction. The second process is lime peel processing using the peels obtained from the first process for the production of pickled lime, lime jam, lime marmalade or sweet lime. The residue of the ground seed and other wastes from the extraction process can be used as biopesticides or fertilizers. This process resulted in zero discharge by the end of the process. The clean production on freeze-dried lime powder processing has been implemented by the Pilot Plant Development and Training Institute, KMUTT. The results showed high productivity and low environmental impact. The preliminary study on financial analysis showed high feasibility for commercial production.