Economic pre-feasibility of supercritical fluid extraction of antioxidants from fruit residues

During the different stages of the supply chain, large amounts of waste are generated, being mostly disposed of in landfills. Most of these residues have a high content of valuable compounds with a high antioxidant capacity. These compounds have a high potential for use in different industries, such as the pharmaceutical and food industries. Supercritical fluid extraction is one of the technologies available for extracting effectively these components from wastes. Several studies have focused on this technology to show its advantages. This work aims evaluates the production of bioactive compound from different fruit residues to analyze their economic pre-feasibility using supercritical fluid extraction. Five fruit wastes were used for the analysis: mango peel, yellow passion fruit seed, raspberry seeds, mandarin peel, and açaí berry exhausted pulp. As results there was found that the use of a co-solvent increases production costs. Another influencing factor was the extraction yield related to the raw material used. The appropriate selection of these variables makes it possible to obtain economically viable processes. The yellow passion fruit presents the better economic indicators for obtaining an oil extract mainly composed of palmitic acid. With the raw material flow of 100 kg/h, a profit margin of 86.94% was obtained, which was the higher than for other raw materials. Additionally, the minimum flow of yellow passion fruit is 5.13 kg/h to obtain an NPV of zero at ten years.