Integration of Maceration and Freeze Concentration for Recovery of Vitamin C from Orange Peel Waste

Vitamin C (L-ascorbic acid) is found in orange which provides health benefits to a human body. Orange peel is considered as a waste and dumping the peel can be avoided by extracting it to get valuable compound such as vitamin C. However, none of the vitamin C presents in orange peel has been utilized. Thus, integration of maceration and progressive freeze concentration (PFC) for recovery of vitamin C from orange peel was studied. Maceration is a conventional extraction technique that mostly used for obtaining compound extracts from plant and PFC is currently become attention for concentration process. For this purpose, different operating conditions for maceration and PFC were evaluated with regard to vitamin C recovery. The operating conditions that were analysed are drying temperature (30 to 45 °C), coolant temperature (-10 to -16 °C), cooling time (20 to 35 minutes) and stirring rate (200 to 800 rpm). Titration was done to analyse and correlate the increase of vitamin C in a concentrated solution for different operating conditions. Highest recovery was found at 35 °C of drying temperature, -12 °C of coolant temperature, 20 minutes of cooling time and 400 rpm of stirring rate. The highest value of recovery was found to be 72.06 %. Integrating both maceration and PFC methods add value to the orange peel waste and provide solution for environmental problems.