Agro-Industrial Waste Revalorization: The Growing Biorefinery

Abstract

Agro-industrial residues have been the spotlight of different researches worldwide, due to some of their constituents being raw material to generate a diversified variety of industrial products. Nowadays, this situation keeps prevailing and will increase con- tinuously in the future. In the agroindustry, diverse biomasses are subjected to distinct unit processes for providing value to different waste materials from agriculture, food processing, and alcoholic industries. In this chapter, we reported an updated survey of different renewable organic materials that including agricultural wastes can be converted to bioenergy. Similarly, these wastes encrypt different bioactive compounds with an excellent nutraceutical functions and with high adding value. In addition, bio- composites can be elaborated using fibers from wastes with a wide variety of applica- tions in the automotive and packaging industry. Vinasses derived from tequila industry in Mexico represent a lot of potential to extract biocompounds, and we propose a process to obtain them. A perspective of market trend is mentioned in this chapter for compounds derived from agro-industrial wastes. Adding value to those agro-industrial wastes can provide the reduction of negative impact emission, discharge, or disposal, solves an environmental problem, and generates additional income.