Valorization of food solid waste by recovery of polyphenols using hybrid molecular imprinted membrane

Abstract

The food and agricultural products processing industries generate significant quantities of phenolics-rich byproducts, which could be valuable natural sources of antioxidants. In the present study, hot water was used as a solvent to gain extract from lemon, orange and onion peels that were separated from domestic solid wastes. In order to recover the valuable compounds from food solid wastes extract, hybrid molecularly imprinted membrane (HMIM) was synthesized based on the prepared Qurecetin molecular imprinted polymer nanoparticles (Qu–MIP NPs). The binding capacity of the Qu–MIP NPs and its respective non imprinted towards qurecetin (Qu) were found to be 80 and 15 mmol g-1, respectively. The prepared HMIM was characterized using scanning electron microscope (SEM), and the specific surface area, pore volume and pore size were also investigated. The recovery percentage of each polyphenol compound using HMIM was calculated. It was found that the HMIM efficiently recovers the polyphenols from lemon, orange and onion peel extracts with different percentages.