The cashew tree (Anacardium occidentale L.) produces several products, nevertheless the cashew nut (CN) is by far the most commercialized. The CN needs to undergo two mandatory stages to reach commercial quality: the production and processing. However, most reported Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) focus only on CN production resulting in an underestimation of the environmental impacts (EI). For determination of the process EI, a quantification was realized following ISO 14040/14044 and added to the production outcomes found in literature. As a result, the production accounts for 91% while processing represents at least 9% of total EI. In production, there are great opportunities to improve practices that can reduce EI. Therefore, a comparison of an organic against a conventional crop was accomplished. Particularly, the studied farm that is located at Chiapas Mexico avoids the use of any fertilizer or pesticide. Results show that the organic crop improves mainly in climate change, eutrophication, and human toxicity impacts, but the production yield is 21% lower. Consequently, can be concluded that the CN as an organic production can be a great option to a small scale, but challenging at a large scale. Besides the LCA analysis, it was observed that the cashew shell, one of main residues, contains high amounts of anacardic acid (AA), which has high commercial value due its antioxidant properties. However, it was detected that boiling the CN with water, transforms AA to cardanol and cardol through decarboxylation, losing 99.99% of commercial value. Nevertheless, other processing methods avoid this step since its only purpose is to soften the cashew shell for its removal. To study the transformation of AA, three methods were compared: supercritical fluids, thin layer maceration/chromatography and Soxhlet, making emphasis on green chemistry principles. Results obtained by GC-MS confirms the decarboxylation. By removing boiling, one liter of water is saved per each kilogram of CN, avoids 14% of EI of the process and the AA is preserved. Hence the recovery of AA in the cashew shell can lead to new economic opportunities and human development to the people involved in the production line.

Complete analysis of the cashew nut (Anacardium occidentale L.) production and processing with later recovery of anacardic acid from vegetal residues

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