A step-by-step technoeconomic analysis of supercritical carbon dioxide extraction of lycopene from tomato processing waste

There is a demand for natural lycopene in both nutraceutical and food industries. Tomato processing waste is a promising source to isolate high value lycopene. In recent years, there is a growing interest in green extraction methods such as supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) extraction due to benefits of SC-CO2 extraction and the drawbacks of the conventional solvent extraction methods. Lab scale SC-CO2 extraction of tomato processing byproducts (TPBP) has been reported in the literature as a green extraction method; however, there is no reported study on the economic and technical feasibility of scaling up this process. Therefore, this paper presents an economic evaluation package for SC-CO2 extraction of lycopene from TPBP and calculates its parameters one by one. The economic analysis was carried out for SC-CO2 extraction plant with a 100 L extractor volume by testing 15 scenarios at temperatures ranging from 40 to 80 degrees C, pressures ranging from 30 to 50 MPa, and peel mass fractions in the TPBP ranging from 0.3 to 0.7. The most promising condition for maximizing the manufacturing profit was 80 degrees C, 50 MPa, and feed with a peel mass fraction of 0.3, which leads to a net present value of 41.8 million USD and a payback period of 0.32 years.

Automated summary

There is a growing demand for natural lycopene in various industries. This study evaluates the economic feasibility of extracting lycopene from tomato processing waste using the green extraction method of SC-CO2 extraction. The optimal conditions for maximizing profit were found to be 80 degrees C, 50 MPa, and a peel mass fraction of 0.3.