Increased significance of food wastes: selective recovery of added-value compounds.

A single-step selective separation of two food additives was investigated using alcohol-salt aqueous two-phase systems (ATPS). The selective partitioning of two of the most used additives from a processed food waste material, vanillin and l-ascorbic acid, was successfully accomplished. The results obtained prove that alcohol-salt ATPS can be easily applied as cheaper processes for the selective recovery of valuable chemical products from food wastes and other sources.