Hypercritical separation technology (HYST): A sustainable technology for agricultural by-products valorization

Abstract

Agricultural activities produce worldwide about 3 billion tonnes of by-products and residues per year, that represent an important source of food, feed and bioenergy. The technologies currently available for these resources exploitation are not economically advantageous and not environmental friendly. Hypercritical Separation Technology (HYST) is an innovative technology based only on physical process, for the disaggregation of biomass. By this technology, a flour for human consumption with high vitamin and minerals content can be obtained from cereal bran. The HYST system has proved to be efficient to produce also feed with high nutritional value and improved digestibility. In the bioenergy sector, this technology could play a crucial role, for a sustainable and cheap production of second generation biomethane. Future projects to explore the potentialities of this technology will involve new agricultural residues, such as grape pomace, source of antioxidants and rice bran, source of proteins, regarding the food application, and the production of chemicals from fermentative process of lignocelluloses biomass for green chemistry applications.