(369a) Upgrading Food Waste to High Commercial Value Chemicals

The profound challenge of food waste (FW) is evidenced by the fact that approximately a third of global food production (i.e., 1.3 billion tons) ends up as waste. Traditional FW treatment methods, such as disposal into landfills and composting, are environmentally unfriendly. Intensive exploration of other methods that selectively convert the diverse components of FW to high commercial value chemicals is a key to alleviating this challenge. Extraction of antioxidant and antimicrobial activity providing chemicals (flavonoids, phenolic acids, etc.) from FW feedstocks is one such economically lucrative option to valorize FW. However, separation and purification of these high commercial value chemicals is challenging owing to their similar chemical nature, high boiling points and low concentrations in FW. To the best of our knowledge, currently there is no method to separate and purify phenolic compounds post extraction from FW or non-food biomass. Our study directly addresses this issue by proposing a scalable and extensible methodology for separation of the target molecules using molecular imprinted polymers. Synthesis of polymers with imprinted functionality is key in optimizing the selectivity and performance of the material. Computational methods were used to screen through 28 monomers to expose their interaction with the target molecule. Experimental investigations revealed that itaconic acid with chlorogenic acid as the template provides the highest separation factor (higher than the literature standard, acrylamide). The performance of the polymer at separating structurally similar was tested in various extraction solvents. Complementing IR studies were done to understand the underlying interactions. The application of the polymer for separation of polyphenols extracted from real food waste and standard mixtures with known composition is demonstrated.