With the rapid growth of the bioeconomy, major conceptual developments are occurring for biorefineries to maximize utilization of renewable resources, including grains of cereals and oilseeds. Supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) technology has a major role to play in modern biorefineries. Currently, the applications of the SC-CO2 in industry is limited to extraction due to lack of information on the potential of the SC-CO2 technology to replace various unit operations in food and material processing. In this presentation, our perspectives on how to integrate these unit operations to build supercritical biorefineries for the processing of grains and oilseeds to generate various high value fractions and products will be presented. Designing a continuous integrated extraction-fractionation-reaction-particle formation system based on SC-CO2 technology will be presented. Such an approach may allow us to develop a green process that utilizes all fractions of the starting food or bioresource material, produce several high value products and fractions, minimize waste generation and water consumption, and eliminate toxic chemicals from food processing. Integrated supercritical biorefineries will have several advantages; it will be green (i.e., no solvent is used and no or minimum waste is generated), simple, continuous, and energy-efficient. The proposed process will be able to produce a variety of high value fractions and “clean” products, such as oil, high value health and wellness promoting bioactives (e.g., phytosterols, carotenoids, and tocols), bioactive carrier micro- and nanostructures, structured lipids, biofuel, and biomaterials. Challenges associated with the novel process development will also be discussed.<br/>Complete utilization of all the grain components in such a biorefinery may reduce the food vs. fuel competition. It will also help meet the growing consumer demand for “natural” products processed with “green” technologies. SC-CO2-based biorefineries could play a key role in moving toward a sustainable bioeconomy via process intensification, by reducing energy consumption and waste streams, and increasing process efficiency while providing a range of food and industrial ingredients and products. Building partnerships with conventional industries that generate CO2 will be a win-win situation for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and creating new opportunities for CO2 utilization within biorefineries.

Realizing integrated supercritical fluid biorefineries for the green processing of grains and oilseeds

255th National Meeting (2018)

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