Amicrex · Development of a Microwave Assisted Cell Disruption of Biomass and Extraction of Valuable Compounds

Development of a Microwave Assisted Cell Disruption of Biomass and Extraction of Valuable Compounds

The combination of biomass valorisation, process intensification and green technology is an attractive research challenge for the European Community being in line with the “Resource-efficient Europe” flagship initiatives by optimizing the use of material, energy resources and gaining valuable products with lower impact on our environment and health. The AMICREX project accepted this challenge and aimed to develop an integrated process design for future industrial implementation, where by-products from agro-industrial processes (e.g. carrot peels) were valorised by recovering high-value nonpolar components (e.g. carotenoids, well recognized natural pigments and widely used in the food and cosmetic industries) through a microwave assisted extraction process using selected micro-emulsions as extraction solvent. The AMICREX concept can be extended to address the challenges proposed by extraction of nonpolar metabolites, especially carotenoids, from other renewable biomass sources. The key aspects of the proposed technology were 1) to avoid the use of hazardous organic solvents in nonpolar compounds’ extraction by using micro-emulsion as extraction media, and 2) to improve extraction kinetics by microwave assisted extraction in order to facilitate the liberation of intracellular compounds and make them available during the extraction process. The research first focused on the evaluation on the laboratory scale microwave extraction process and on the use of micro-emulsion as extraction solvent combined with wet biomass. Based on the so obtained process and system specifications, the small scale process was aimed to be turned into an industrial design concept through process modelling and simulation. Overall objective of Amicrex was to address the gaps of the current research by establishing an integrated system for continuous microwave cell disruption and subsequent extraction of valuable compounds from semisolid biomass for future industrial implementation. Moreover, an additional environmental friendly and sustainable approach is targeted by the exclusion of organic solvents in the extraction process using micro-emulsion as extraction media. By the implementation of the project gaps between multidisciplinary fields of natural sciences and engineering were filled. Moreover, the interdisciplinary scenario between biomass cell disruption, extraction process and micro-emulsion technology was established (Figure 1)

Data: CORDIS, © European Union