Revalorización de residuos de la Industria de Chocolate para la obtención de biomoléculas de interés industrial a partir de la cascarilla de cacao

Abstract

The constant growth of the world population implies an increase in environmental pollution, mainly due to atmospheric emissions, sewage and solid waste. This is why a change is needed in the current linear economy model (from cradle to grave), based on the idea of using and discarding, to the circular economy model (from cradle to cradle) that involves reducing, reusing and recycle. Precisely, this concept of circular economy is applicable to the treatment of waste from the food industry, i.e., the cocoa bean shell. It represents 12 – 20% of the cocoa seed and its world production is estimated at approximately 700,000 tons per year. Cocoa bean shell is a by-product rich in fibers, antioxidants and phenolic compounds and contains various bioactive compounds that could be used in the biotechnology sector. Due to the increase in the consumption of chocolate derivatives and the inherent generation of waste, this project analysed the effect of hydrolysis treatments on the revaluation of cocoa bean shell to obtain biomolecules of industrial interest. It was observed that the treatments of thermal hydrolysis allow an important increase in the extraction of bioactive compounds, so in the absence of this treatment, values between 7.08 and 13.78 mg TE/g dry weight for antioxidant capacity and between 4.02 and 6.08 mg GAE/g dry weight for total phenolic content were obtained at different pHs. However, the maximum values obtained when the cocoa bean shell were treated by hydrothermal hydrolysis were 38.13 mg TE/g for the antioxidant capacity and 14.59 mg GAE/g for the total phenolic content