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A Biorefinery Approach for an Integral Valorisation of Avocado Peel and Seeds Through Supercritical Fluids

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Abstract

Food residues have a high potential for extracting components of interest to humans, such as phenolic acids and flavonoids. For example, two residues are generated while processing fruits such as avocado: seed and peel. Both residues include components of interest, such as quercetin and catechin. These compounds have different applications, especially in the pharmaceutical industry. Supercritical Fluid Extraction (SFE) has shown to be a promising technology for extracting these and other compounds at different scales. However, these extractions usually involve a high amount of residues to be also valorized. This work analyzes the integral valorization of avocado residues through a biorefinery approach and its comparison with stand-alone processes such as SFE. In addition, the biorefinery considered other value-added products. Integral biorefineries of avocado seed and peel allow profit margins of 47.41% and 43.05%, respectively. In contrast, stand-alone processes evidenced profit margins of 21.40% and 21.14%, respectively. These profit margin differences are due to the integral valorization of avocado residues. Under this integral valorization scheme, the production costs of a crude extract of avocado seed and peel correspond to 5.26 USD/kg and 3.99 USD/kg, respectively. This value is low compared with a production cost of 7.86 USD/kg and 5.52 USD/kg for stand-alone processes for the seed and peel of avocado, respectively. These results show how the integral valorization of wastes (in this case, avocado wastes) leads to a decrease in production costs and an increase in the profit margins of the process.

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The datasets generated during and/or analysed durint the current study is avaible from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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The authors acknowledge the support of the Becas Doctorales del Bicentenario del Proyecto: CORTE I “Formación de capital humano de alto nivel Universidad Nacional de Colombia”.

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  1. Departamento de Ingeniería Química, Instituto de Biotecnología y Agroindustria, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Manizales campus, Caldas, 170003, Manizales, Colombia

    Daissy Lorena Restrepo-Serna, Juan Camilo Solarte-Toro & Carlos Ariel Cardona-Alzate

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Restrepo-Serna, D.L., Solarte-Toro, J.C. & Cardona-Alzate, C.A. A Biorefinery Approach for an Integral Valorisation of Avocado Peel and Seeds Through Supercritical Fluids. Waste Biomass Valor 13, 3973–3988 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12649-022-01829-3

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