By-product Valorisation and Innovation Sustainable in the Agri-Food supply chain: Laboratory Researches.

There is great political and social pressure to reduce the pollution arising from food industrial activities who is heading the entire food area in a perspective of circular economy where food waste are recovered, recycled, requalificated and so converted from waste to resource. Among our laboratory research, two cases study of waste recycle were considerated, oil mill wastewater (OMW), and of spent coffee ground. Olive oil processing generates a large content of OMW, rich in inorganic compound, acids, sugars, phenols, raising several environmental issues. An olive vinegar was obtained in laboratory from the OMW and showed a high potential as functional food with good content of hydroxytyrosol and mineral compounds. Also a study of OMW acetification process in order to establish the best method to its preparation (alcoholic-acetous fermentation with yeast inoculum and the spontaneous acetification) was carried out. Both the methods have produced an acetic acid content around 4% (w/v) but spontaneous acetification has been more performant in relation to consumed sugars. In addition, this procedure given an irrelevant alcohol content and this suggests the acetogenesis was occurred bypassing the alcoholic fermentation. The spent coffee ground, usually discarded as organic waste, has still water, lipids (high concentrations of C16:0, C18:0 and C18:2), some aminoacids and volatile compounds (coffee aroma’s main compounds). This made it possible to development of a recovery system that allowed extracting simultaneously the fat fraction and volatile compounds using organic solvents and separating them from the solid residue. For each phase, new uses and formulations have been devised, including a coffee alcoholic drink from the hydro alcoholic extract, ingredients in the food sector or production of biogas from lipid fraction. Finally the solid residue defatted and dried was used for biopolymers formulation obtaining a biodegradable plastic