Sustainable Plant Extraction Technology to Develop Healthy and Functional Ingredients
A faster, sustainable plant extraction method that is column-less and a zero-waste processing method, validated at pilot extraction scale.
The method is non-ethanol based that optimizes the yield of bioactives from botanicals. This continuous cyclical extraction methodology has been validated at one tonne production scale to yield plant extracts of higher bioactive purity at a fraction of current production time & cost. As only food grade, non-ethanol based, solvent is used, extracted ingredients are Halal-certifiable.
The method uses one process to extract the volatile components of botanicals after the extraction of minute amount of non-volatile bioactives, reaping two or more products with minimal or zero waste generation. This methodology is also able to recover plant proteins/soluble fibre, from spent grains & homogenous plant waste generated by the food & agricultural industry, for transformation into high value functional ingredients.
In summary, this technology addresses two market challenges in the Food Industry:
1. The high cost & complexity of current column chromatography-based extraction limiting mass market access to quality plant extracts.
2. High wastage of food processing side-streams in the food processing & agricultural industry. These side-streams are currently dried up, at high energy cost, into low value animal feed and fertilizers. Recovering of plant proteins/soluble fibre from these side-streams provides an alternate source of quality plant extracts for development into mass market friendly functional food & supplements, while reducing the energy cost of disposing of these side-streams