Extraction and Characterization of Orange Peel Essential Oil from Mexico and United States of America

Abstract

The food industry is growing significantly every year. Annually, large quantities of fruits and vegetables are grown to meet the population demand. Among them, the orange (Citrus sinensis) production was 70.45 Mt in 2013. After consumption, the remaining orange peel is considered as a waste. From an economic and environmental perspective, the extraction of orange essential oil is a high value-added option for the valorization and use of the orange peel. Therefore, the objective of this study was to determine the experimental conditions where the maximum yield of essential oil of orange peel is obtained by applying a factorial design. The most relevant extraction process factors studied were the grinding time and the operating time. The characterization of the essential oil included FT-IR, GC-FID, high heating value determination and TG analysis. For the processed orange peel, the high heating value was measured, and the SEM-EDS analyses were performed. The maximum experimental yield was achieved with 500 cm3 of solvent, 50 min of extraction time and 2 min of grinding time. The results obtained at these conditions were: a yield of essential oil of 5.23% v/w, with a concentration of 74.43% of limonene, 4.27% of p-myrcene, 3.26% of sabinene, 1.54% of β-pinene, and 1.54 % of linalool. The high heating value of essential oil was 44.25 MJ/kg, and for orange peel was 15.82 MJ/kg. The orange peel elemental composition analysis showed 24.1% oxygen and 73.51% carbon.