Advanced manufacture of polyphenols, essential oils and bacterial cellulose in a novel citrus processing wastewater biorefinery.

Herein, a citrus processing wastewater-based biorefinery has been developed manufacturing essential oils, polyphenols and bacterial cellulose. Liquid-liquid extraction was evaluated for isolation of essential oils assessing different organic solvents, recovering 0.45 kg of essential oils per m of wastewater using n-heptane. Amberilte® XAD4, XAD16N and XAD7HP, PurSorb™ PAD900, biochar and activated biochar were compared as adsorbents for polyphenols recovery, demonstrating that the adsorption isotherms of the resins applied could be closely predicted using the Langmuir model. Adsorption and desorption density experiments exhibited that the phenolic content present in citrus processing wastewater could be efficiently recovered using PAD900, yielding 0.78 kg of polyphenols per m of wastewater. The sugar content remaining following polyphenols adsorption was applied for bacterial cellulose production employing Komagataeibacter sucrofermentans DSM 15973 determining the biopolymer's production efficiency as well as morphological and structural properties at different carbon to free amino nitrogen ratios. The higher content of the biomaterial was obtained employing 15.0 carbon to free amino nitrogen ratio, which yielded 4.4 kg of biopolymer per m of wastewater. The study has shown that by decreasing the carbon to free amino nitrogen ratio could enable enhancing the water-holding capacity of bacterial cellulose, exhibiting that the control of fermentation conditions could potentially enable tailoring the properties of the biomaterial for certain industrial applications. The bioactive, antioxidant and preservative properties of essential oils and polyphenols constitute the aforementioned products significant for a range of industrial applications within the pharmaceutical, cosmetics and food sectors.