Valorisation of Agro-industrial Waste: Recent Advances in the Recovery of Bioactive Compounds and Environmental Perspectives

Abstract

Population growth in recent years has led to an increase in the demand for food, thus increasing the amount of agro-industrial waste generated. It is therefore necessary to valorise these wastes in order to obtain maximum benefits from them. Bioactive compounds derived from these wastes have generated great interest in recent years due to their wide variety of potential applications. However, conventional processes used to extract them have a high environmental impact, requiring the use of other non-conventional and greener techniques. Many non-conventional methods are under study, but their real impact is unknown. For this reason, in this work, a study of several processes has been conducted, as well as evaluation of some of them from the point of view of their environmental sustainability, for which the life cycle assessment has been used. The results of the study demonstrate a lower environmental load for the studied non-conventional methods, especially in the case of ultrasound-assisted extraction. However, the sustainability of the different processes still needs to be further assessed, since there are still limitations at present.