Process optimisation for recovery of carotenoids from tomato waste

Carotenoids constitute an important component of waste originating from tomato processing plants. Studies were carried out to assess the extraction yield of tomato waste carotenoids in different solvents and solvent mixtures and to optimise the extraction conditions for maximum recovery. A mixture of ethyl acetate and hexane gave the highest carotenoid extraction yield among the others examined. Extraction conditions, such as percentage of hexane in the solvent mixture of ethyl acetate and hexane, ratio of solvent to waste and particle size were optimised using a statistically designed experiment. A regression equation for predicting the carotenoid yield as a function of three extraction variables was derived by statistical analysis and a model with predictive ability of 0.97 was obtained. The optimised conditions for maximum carotenoid yield (37.5 mg kg⁻¹ dry waste) were 45% hexane in solvent mixture, solvent mixture to waste ratio of 9.1:1 (v/w) and particle size 0.56 mm.