Techno-economic evaluation of a polyphenols extraction process from grape seed

Caviro is one of the main wine producers in Italy. Caviro has two main headquarters in Emilia-Romagna. The one which is known as production plant is based in Faenza, while the other one where the bottling and storing is mainly carried out is in Forli. Wine and by-products are produced in Faenza. Then, produced wine is sent to the plant in Forli for storing, aging in case of some wines, analogical testing, and bottling for selling. Extraction of polyphenols from grape seeds has been investigated for couple of years. According to company’s goals and in compliance with circular economy goals of the company, the extraction process has been determined as a high added value by-product production. During my internship in the company, I had the opportunity to carry out extraction in lab-scale and pilot scale. In lab-scale experiments, 1 L Pyrex bottles were used as extraction chambers. Based on literature review, liquid to solid ratio of 4.75 has been applied. 850 mL of 50% v/v ethanol solution as extraction solution. The extraction cycle consists of two stages. Each stage lasts for four hours. After the first stage, solution is measured transferred to another Pyrex bottle. According to the same L/S ratio, fresh seeds has been added to the bottle to conduct the second stage of the extraction. The obtained solution was distilled in vacuum condition (-1barg) to recover the ethanol and concentrate the product. Exhausted seeds were washed to recover the adsorbed ethanol from seeds to optimize the process. By optimizing the process around 95% of inserted ethanol has been recovered. The washing solution has been used for 4 washing cycles to fulfil the recovery goals. By conducting the mass balance all obtained results were verified.