Full Length Research Paper

Extraction of pure lycopene from industrial tomato waste in water using the extractor Naviglio^®

Daniele Naviglio^1*, Fabiana Pizzolongo¹, Lydia Ferrara², Biagio Naviglio³, Alejandro Aragòn⁴, and Antonello Santini¹

¹Dipartimento di Scienza degli Alimenti, Università di Napoli Federico II, Via Università 100, 80055 Portici (Napoli), Italy.

²Dipartimento di Chimica Farmaceutica e Tossicologia, Università di Napoli Federico II,

Via Montesano 49, 80131 Napoli, Italy.

³Stazione Sperimentale per l’Industria delle Pelli e delle Materie Concianti, Via Poggioreale 39, 80143 Napoli, Italy.

⁴Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias y Forestales, Universidad de La Plata, Calle 60 y 119, 1900 - La Plata (Buenos Aires), Argentina.

*Corresponding author. E-mail: naviglio@unina.it

Accepted 25  March, 2008

   Abstract

In this paper an innovative process for the extraction of pure lycopene from tomato-waste in water that uses the Extractor Naviglio^® and water as solvent is presented. The use of water as extracting solvent considerably reduces the cost of the entire process if compared with the commonly used solvent-based procedure or with the newer supercritical extraction process of lycopene from tomato-waste. Exhausted tomato-waste treated with water can be then easily dried at room temperature and further used, e.g. in agriculture or as food ingredient in animal nutrition. Lycopene, not soluble in water, was recovered in a quasi-crystalline solid form and purified by SPE (Solid Phase Extraction) using a small amount of organic solvent. The all trans lycopene was obtained at a very high grade of purity, not less than 98% (w/w), with an average recovery from tomato waste of 14% (w/w). The availability of high purity all trans lycopene allowed us also to measure the molar absorption coefficient, unique for each molecule. An alternative procedure for the HPLC analysis, that uses a phenyl-hexyl silicone stationary phase as inverse phase and a linear gradient in water and acetonitrile, is also described.

Key words: Lycopene, Extractor Naviglio^®, tomato-waste, HPLC-Diode array, solid-liquid extraction, chromatography, solid phase extraction.