Secondary biomass streams valorization
Georgia produces about 70 thousand tonnes of mandarins annually, 50% of which gets exported. The local fruit juice industry utilizes most of the mandarins left in the country to produce mandarin juice. However, the leftover mandarin pomace causes serious environmental issues as the piled-up pomace waste leaches acidic decomposting products as well as essential oils into the environment. Mandarin pomace is a rich source of fine chemicals and the project will develop environmentally friendly technologies to extract those chemicals from the waste.
The current project is being implemented in cooperation with the Agricultural University of Georgia and the company Georgian Industrial Asset Management Group, a fruit plant representative.
The aim of the project is to develop or improve waste valorization technologies to alleviate the the environmental footprint of the Georgian mandarin juice industry by utilizing the principles of circular economy:
1. Development of efficient and cost-effective extraction of polyphenols (glycosylated flavanones
(hesperidin and narirutin), polymethoxylated flavones (nobiletin and tangeretin) from mandarin waste products
2. Development of an efficient and cost-effective recovery process of essential oils (limonene)
All the proposed valorization techniques will be rolled out, finally, on a semi-industrial scale.
