Pressurized and Supercritical Fluids for Novel Integrated Processing of Crop Biomass and Food By-Products

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Development and integration of new environmentally friendly technologies is crucial to generate bioactives and value-added products from vast crop biomass. Subcritical water (sCW), pressurized fluids (PF) and supercritical fluids (SCF) are versatile solvents that provide a green processing platform to develop independent and integrated processing approaches for agricultural (straw), and food industry (peel, hull, etc) by-products. The applicant's research area to date has focused on the use of sCW and supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) for solubility determination and modeling (glucose, lactose, oil), extraction of compounds (phenolics, carbohydrates, artemisinin) with sCW, SC-CO2, PF (water+ethanol), and reactions in SC-CO2 and sCW media. Future work would therefore continue to build on this expertise by further contributions to process design, development and integration using sCW/PF/SCF. The main objectives of this proposal are to: 1) determine and model solubility behavior of bioactives and food components in sCW and PF; 2) determine the effects of process parameters, temperature, pressure, pH and flow rate, to design, develop and optimize fractionation processes; 3) propose and validate reaction mechanisms for food compounds, and crop biomass depolymerization in sCW and PFs, determine reaction kinetics and model these systems; and 4) integrate sCW/PF/SCF processes to obtain bioactives and high value compounds. The long-term objective of my research program is to determine how thermodynamic variables and transport properties influence extraction, fractionation, reaction, and drying in sCW, PF and SCF media, and to develop new integrated green technologies to obtain value-added products that can have a number of uses in food and non-food industrial applications. In the proposed research program, thermodynamic properties, such as solubility will be measured experimentally. Equilibrium studies will allow the selection of optimum pressure and temperature for fractionation and reaction processes. Bioactives can be first removed during fractionation and the residues can be converted to value-added compounds through specific reactions. The ability to integrate two new processes will foster innovation. The overall goal of developing value-added products relying on innovative processing technologies will be accomplished through fundamental research at laboratory scale for proof of concepts. Once the novel process is developed and integrated, applications involving diverse biomass (cereals, pulses, oilseeds) will be investigated. Valuable information on the effect of process parameters will be obtained for a batch and semi-continuous system with a future goal to implement it on a continuous system. The use of sCW/PF/SCF technology minimizes or eliminates the use of organic solvents and catalysts, thus minimizing environmental impact and meeting the growing demands of environment- and health-conscious consumers.