Optimising Green Pressurised Liquid Extraction and Sustainability Assessment of Carotenoid-Rich Extracts from Daucus carota L. Pomace

The increasing food waste generated along the food chain should be considered as a source of high-value compounds, with the aim of improving the circularity of productions. In this study, carrot pomace, the major by-product of carrot juice processing, was used as a source of carotenoids. For the valorisation of this by-product, different non-conventional extraction methods of carotenoids such as Ultrasound-Assisted Extraction (UAE) and Pressurised Liquid Extraction (PLE) have been developed. For the latter, the main parameters influencing the extraction have been optimised using a multivariate response surface design. Compared with previous reports, this study advances the current knowledge by using only food-grade ethanol/water mixtures as solvents and by combining the optimisation of carotenoid recovery with the measurement of energy consumption to evaluate process efficiency. Moreover, the sustainability of the extraction was quantitatively assessed using the AGREEprep metric, providing a more integrated and environmentally sound strategy for the valorisation of <i>Daucus carota</i> L. pomace.