Innovative and environmental-friendly process to extract polyphenols, polyalcohols and furfural from olive cake by a biorefinery scheme

Background: The aim of this study was the optimization of hydrothermal treatments for the extraction of value-added products from olive cake concretely, polyphenols, polyalcohols and furfural. For this purpose, this work used a new and environmental-friendly process with olive cake which only was used in a previous study. Methods: Different hydrothermal treatments were realised at temperature of 30 degrees C for 1 h to determine and quantify these value-added products. Resulting solid from hydrothermal treatment at 30 degrees C was subjected to autohydrolysis at temperatures of 120, 140, 160 and 180 degrees C and times of 30, 60 and 90 min in order to see the variation of value-added products concentrations. The resultant liquid fractions were also performed a posthydrolysis with the aim of obtain a fermentation media. Significant findings: The highest extraction was for inositol with a concentration of 1691.7 mg/L. In both cases, inositol concentration was the highest with a value of 1.86 % in autohydrolysis and 1.44 % in posthydrolysis. Polyphenols extracted were identified and it was found that some of them could be extracted only using water instead of ethyl acetate. Experimental results were fitted with a neural-fuzzy model to study the relationship between the operational variables and dependent variables. (c) 2022 Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

The aim of this study was to optimize hydrothermal treatments for extracting value-added products from olive cake, specifically polyphenols, polyalcohols, and furfural. The highest extraction was achieved for inositol, with a concentration of 1691.7 mg/L. The study found that certain polyphenols could be extracted using water instead of ethyl acetate. Overall, the research focused on developing an environmentally-friendly process for extracting valuable compounds from olive cake.