Skip to main content
Log in

Food wastes phenolic compounds (PCs): overview of contemporary greener extraction technologies, industrial potential, and its integration into circular bioeconomy

  • Review Paper
  • Published:
Energy, Ecology and Environment Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Phenolic compounds (PCs) are abundant throughout the plant kingdom, which occurs in inexpensive resources, such as waste from food processing industries and agriculture activities. This has increased their extraction and subsequent utilization during the past few years. Natural phenolic compounds (Flavonoids and non-flavonoids) have grown more appealing from a technical standpoint, in addition to their usage in pharmaceuticals or as an additive in nutraceuticals, they also have potential in polymer technology. PCs have health-promoting qualities that can be attributed to their strong antioxidant activity and free radicals scavenging activity. These antioxidant properties protect against the action of oxidative species and are linked to the lower incidence of chronic non-communicable diseases such as diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and neurodegenerative conditions. The extraction of phenols from food processing wastes has been studied using a variety of extraction procedures, most of which rely on the usage of organic solvents. Furthermore, there is currently a growing demand for environmentally friendly and affordable methods that produce polyphenol extracts with slightly harmful impacts on the environment. The employment of greener technologies like microwave-assisted extraction (MAE), deep eutectic solvent (DES) extraction, ultrasound-assisted extraction (UAE), supercritical fluid extraction (SFE), subcritical water extraction (SBWE), pressurized liquid extraction (PLE) and enzymatic extraction processes are examined in detail in this review which focuses on contemporary novel and feasible techniques for recovering useful PCs from food processing wastes. Further, how the greener extraction of PCs from food waste and its application in different industries can be integrated into a circular bioeconomy is also summarized.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1 
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

All data about work are included in the manuscript.

References

Download references

Funding

BK is thankful to the DST-SERB NPDF (PDF/2022/001781) scheme for financial support.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

LB: Data collection, organization, analysis, overall supervision and revision of MS. DSVGKK: Data collection and compilation. TS: Data collection and compilation. HJ: Data collection, analysis and compilation. BK: Data collection, analysis, figures and table organization, overall supervision and revision of MS.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Latika Bhatia or Bikash Kumar.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Bhatia, L., Kaladhar, D.S.V.G.K., Sarkar, T. et al. Food wastes phenolic compounds (PCs): overview of contemporary greener extraction technologies, industrial potential, and its integration into circular bioeconomy. Energ. Ecol. Environ. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40974-024-00321-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40974-024-00321-z

Keywords

Navigation