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The Role of Green Technologies for the Extraction of Bioactive Compounds from Food By-Products

A special issue of Molecules (ISSN 1420-3049). This special issue belongs to the section "Applied Chemistry".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 August 2022) | Viewed by 562

Special Issue Editor

1. Laboratory for Separation Processes and Product Design, Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Maribor, Slovenia
2. Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maribor, Maribor, Slovenia
Interests: supercritical fluids; supercritical fluid extraction; conventional extractions; separation processes; product formulations; bioactivity
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Increasing pressure on natural resources and the problems caused by unhealthy eating habits have brought along more frequent incidence of different types of cancer. Additionally, the worldwide population is aging and countries are facing ongoing challenges in caring for their elderly. Consequently, the demand for different types of high-quality products is increasing. Substantial investigation has been concentrated on fruits and crops containing antioxidant bioactive compounds. These extra nutritional constituents are present in both plant and animal products, and typically occur in low quantities in foods. Here, extraction is an important process to isolate the bioactive compounds. Biological activities of the extract highly depends on the extraction procedure and this releases a gateway for selection of appropriate extraction methods. A great deal of interest has been devoted to the extraction of active components from natural sources, aiming at satisfying the increasing request of natural products not only for therapeutic use but also as preventing and protecting agents. Among the large number of active substances focused on, polyphenols have received particular attention in the last decade. The identification and development of phenolic compounds or extracts from different plants has become a major area of food, health- and medical-related research. Extracts containing these natural ingredients are incorporated into different food, therapeutic and cosmetic products. Most of the compounds were extracted using Soxhlet and conventional solvent extraction methods. However, conventional solvent extraction has certain disadvantages, such as application of large amount of solvents, long extraction times, and the presence of toxic organic solvents in the final products.

Processes based on SCFs are environment-friendly alternatives to traditional solvent extraction techniques. Valorization of by-products for the recovery of oil, phenolic compounds, and fibers by the means of sustainable extraction procedures has gained increased interest. In recent years, according to the biorefinery concept sub- and supercritical fluid extractions have been utilized as alternative extraction techniques of both polar and nonpolar compounds for processing of a spectrum of marketable products. Extraction efficiency is affected by numerous factors such as polarity and concentration of solvent, material–solvent ratio, duration, temperature, pH, etc. Studies on the influence of a single factor have been conducted, while the relations between the factors on the extract yield and composition have not been studied comprehensively.

The purpose of the Special Issue is to encourage the publication of manuscripts focused on bioactive compounds present in natural materials and food processing by-products, which are of economic importance in the food, feed and pharmaceutical industries, as well as in medicine, and are known for their beneficial effects.

Prof. Masa Knez Hrncic
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Molecules is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • separation processes
  • green technologies
  • bioactive compounds
  • antimicrobial
  • antitumor
  • antioxidant
  • antimutagenic

Published Papers

There is no accepted submissions to this special issue at this moment.
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