Pyrolytic conversion of inactive biomass derivatives into bioactive compounds

GIRI, GERMÁN F.; RAMALLO, I. AYELÉN; FURLÁN, RICARDO L. E. ; SUÁREZ, ALEJANDRA G.; SPANEVELLO, ROLANDO A.

Golden

Otro; 11th annual ACS Summer School on Green Chemistry and Sustainable Energy.; 2013

American Chemical Society

Nature provides us with a huge variety of renewable resources which we call Biomass. The search of new practical methods to obtain economically useful chemicals from those sources is highly desirable because this could allow the use of biomass instead of petroleum as a sustainable source of raw materials. The disposal products derived from the human activity also constitute part of biomass which could be recycled to favor the preservation of the environment1. On the other hand, antioxidants play an important role as a health protecting factor. They are known compounds that minimize the adverse effects generated by Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) in living systems. Antioxidant compounds like phenolic acids, polyphenols and flavonoids scavenge free radicals such as peroxide, hydroperoxide or lipid peroxyl and thus inhibit the oxidative stress mechanisms. They are important molecules owing to their usefulness in food preservation, in prevention of diseases caused by oxidative stress and in cosmetics. In this work, we demonstrated the use of soy flour and soy hull (oil industry byproducts) as sources of bioactive compounds. Subjecting such materials to a pyrolytic process we can obtain a complex mix of products (crude) that we found contain a very promising antioxidant activity.