CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Largequantities of carrots are annually discarded in different parts of the worldbecause they do not meet market standards. Besides theeconomic loss to the producers the discard poses an environmental problem. In order to decrease the environmental impactand increase the sustainability of this important primary crop an integralprocess of valorization of by-products from discarded carrots: ethanol, carotene, pectin and dietary fibers, isproposed in this work. Threemethodologies are proposed that differ in the quality of the product obtained,the yields achieved, the equipment used and hence the costs involved. The selected procedures allow extracting 97%of fermentable sugars, which were used as feedstock for a fermentation reactor.The concentration of bioethanol obtained after fermentation process was 28.8 gL-1. Bioethanol was subsequentlyused as a solvent for extraction of carotenes and pectins, thus reducingprocess costs. The extraction yields for carotenes and pectins were 94.2% and50%, respectively. The composition ofdietary fiber in the discards was also assessed. The soluble fiber (SDF) / insoluble fiber(IDF) ratio was 1:2.77, indicating that the fiber was suitable for food supplementation.