Estrazione di molecole attive da biomasse tramite processi fisici

Organic waste is an abundant resource that is often overlooked and underutilized. To find a meaningful, sustainable and economic use of organic wastes is becoming nowadays a recurrent research object. Several studies have developed the application on the extraction of valuable chemical compounds from biomass residues. Many of these activated molecules are commonly used in the pharmaceutical, food, and cosmetic industries and are usually derived from non-renewable sources. Accordingly, biomass extraction could represent a sustainable source of some important compounds, such as polyphenols and flavonoids. The isolation of the molecules can be accomplished by a variety of traditional methods, as solvent extraction,percolation and maceration, and non-conventional as ultrasound-assisted extraction, microwave-assisted extraction and supercritical fluid extraction . In this study, the maceration method and the ultrasound-assisted one have been compared for polyphenols extraction from different biomasses. Traditionally, the biomass is mixed with a solvent and is then heated, stirred, or agitated for a long time, till the desired concentration is reached. The use of ultrasounds shows an industrial time decrease and an increase on process efficiency. A less energy consumption can be achieved due to the less strict operating conditions. This technique can be applied either for small or large scale. For these reasons, ultrasounds are considered as an alternative eco-friendly green technology to the actual conventional extraction methods.

Study of the traditional (maceration) and not (ultrasound-assisted) extraction techniques for biomass valorization. The plants which analyzed are nettle leaves and artichoke. The bioactive molecules are polyphenols and in particular chlorogenic acid.