Upcycling food waste for sustainable applications
Agricultural streams and food production residues contain valuable compounds such as proteins and bioactive ingredients that can be exploited as alternatives to animal proteins and petrochemicals. At present, the high cost and lack of knowledge prohibit optimal utilisation by biorefining these biomass side streams into sustainable ingredients for various products and applications.
Biorefining agricultural side streams
The EU-funded Pro-Enrich project aims to change this by advancing and integrating a range of biorefining technologies. A group of 16 partners across Europe joined forces to promote an environmentally sustainable approach for changing the protein production map. “We wanted to demonstrate that agriculture side stream products can have great commercial value, and biorefining can be the key solution using small- and large-scale bioprocessing units,” explains Anne Christine Steenkjær Hastrup, project coordinator and director at the Danish Technological Institute's Center for Bioresources and Biorefining. As a first step, the Pro-Enrich consortium undertook quality assessment of the supply chain and raw materials by collecting information on the specific needs of various end users, product purity and functionality requirements. This helped the development of a biorefinery approach for extracting proteins and secondary metabolites from tomato, rapeseed, olive, and citrus fruit side streams. The approach involved mechanical pre-processing and novel enzyme treatments and was linked to downstream fractionation of the selected feedstocks. In collaboration with industrial partners laboratory and pilot-scale production and performance testing was undertaken towards refinement and optimisation of process protocols that comply with end-user needs and requirements.
Pro-Enrich products
The most promising products and potentially exploitable results from each raw material have been identified and evaluated continuously in close collaboration with consortium end users. Examples of promising products include rapeseed protein from hot- and cold-pressed cake, lycopene from tomato and hesperidin from citrus peel and pulp, all useful for cosmetics, nutraceuticals and adhesives. The generated protein products from rapeseed cake reached 90 % purity, finding potential use in food, feed and adhesives production. The processing, extraction and purification process of hesperidin from citrus fruit peel was robust with good yield and purity. Both hesperidin and lycopene will be exploited as food and cosmetic ingredients by the Pro-Enrich partner Natac Group, a leader in the botanical industry.
Impact and prospects
Pro-Enrich has demonstrated the possibility to generate high-value compounds from biorefinery systems, offering more optimal use of agricultural and industrial side- and residual streams. This approach has the potential to become a game changer for sustainable bio-based product solutions and serve as a new business model. “Undoubtedly, there are still challenges associated with lowering the environmental footprint of the processes,” highlights Hastrup. However, the consortium is optimistic that there is potential for process optimisation to industrially upscale the technologies. The Pro-Enrich biorefining process is flexible in principle and can be exploited on other types of biomasses or residue fractions. Moreover, the developed analytical extraction and separation methods are generic and can provide the basic knowledge for future projects and product developments.
Keywords
Pro-Enrich, biorefining, protein, hesperidin, lycopene, biomass, cosmetics, adhesives, food production, agriculture
