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Food industry waste biorefineries: future energy, valuable recovery, and waste treatment 395

(Pfaltzgraff et al., 2013). The food waste generated from plant products is rich in
carbohydrates, lipids, minerals, proteins, and many other phytochemical com-
pounds. That’s why scientists should introduce some techniques to recover these
compounds or for their conversion in high-value products. The complex structure of
the constituents present in food waste requires multidisciplinary techniques for their
valorization (Tuck et al., 2012)(Fig. 17.2).
At present, an integrated concept on the basis of biorefinery has been developed
for the production of various products via food waste processing. Biorefinery talks
about the integration of multidisciplinary techniques including various fields, such
as agriculture, chemistry, engineering, and microbiology, for the processing of bio-
mass in an eco-friendly manner to separate the building blocks of the food waste,
such as carbohydrates, proteins, oil, and lipid (Cherubini et al., 2007). The concept
of biorefinery possesses a number of advantages over conventional methods of pro-
cessing. Biorefinery processing utilizes full feedstock with the generation of a very
little amount of waste along with the production of diversified products with great
benefits. Along with that the biorefinery processing has the potential to produce
biogas to provide energy to the self-system.
The process of biorefinery involves three phases related to type of biomass, what
are the targeted products along with the techniques utilized. Phase I is usually firm,
which follows the policy of one process to treat one type of biomass to form one
targeted product. The process of dry grind bioethanol production is the best exam-
ple of phase I, where corn is milled followed by saccharification and then fermen-
ted for product formation (Kwiatkowski et al., 2006). Phase II biorefinery is little

Figure 17.2 Valuable products that can be manufactured from food waste.