FOOD WASTE, DISRUPTED. Extracting its hidden value.

Tea leaves: some people use them to predict the future, but you could also use them to help create the future. A better future for everyone. They are just one example of a material usually thrown away as waste, but which actually still contain huge amounts of valuable goodness.

Even after they have been steeped to make tea, tea leaves are still rich in proteins, dietary fibre, and bioactive compounds like polyphenols. Far from being useless waste, these useful materials can become important ingredients in cosmetics and nutritional supplements. All you need is a way to extract them.

The latest, most efficient way to do this is a technology known as disruptive extraction. In disruptive extraction, the used tea leaves – or fruit peel, or olive leaves, or spent coffee grounds – are immersed in a flow of liquid solvent, usually water. The solvent flows over the material in one direction, while a series of rotors push the other way, against the current, agitating the solvent, causing turbulence and surges of tiny air bubbles.

The immersion and agitation dissolve the useful compounds from the material into the solvent. You can then collect two things from the extractor: the liquid extract with its dissolved useful compounds, and the remaining solid material, squeezed dry and compacted into a solid brick.

Turbex, solid-liquid extractor

GENTLER, MORE EFFICIENT EXTRACTION

Disruptive extraction is both faster and gentler than other ways of separating solid and liquid extracts.

It is gentler, because the turbulence, high shear and tiny air bubbles (= hydrodynamic cavitation) created by the counter current flow and special profiles of rotors/stators mean the whole process can work at lower temperatures. Traditional higher temperature extraction tends to oxidise the extracts, degrading them. Lower temperature but higher activity extraction gets you the best quality extracts – which can become ingredients in premium products. Thanks in part to the lower operating temperatures in the range of 20/25 °C, disruptive extraction also uses 30% less energy than traditional processes.

And it is faster: partly because those millions of tiny air bubbles dissolve the useful compounds out of the material more efficiently – extracting 50% more than other processes can manage – and partly because disruptive extraction is a one-step process. You only need one machine. The material goes in one intake, solvent goes in another, the extractor does its work and out comes your solid and liquid extracts.

ANDRITZ Turbex, solid-liquid extractor warehouse

SOLID/LIQUID EXTRACTION WITH TURBEX

This disruptive extraction principle comes to life in the Turbex, ANDRITZ’s patented solid/liquid extractor designed for maximum efficiency and yield. Powered by cavitation in a counter-current flow, Turbex enables one-step extraction with minimal energy use, delivering high-quality functional ingredients from by-products in record time. Its ability to boost yield by up to 50% and reduce energy consumption by up to 30% makes it a game-changer for sustainable, profitable food production.

At the Food Innovation Xperience Center (FIX), businesses can test the Turbex extractor and explore optimal processing setups before investing. For occasional or time-sensitive extractions, the skid-mounted Turbex mobile unit offers flexibility and can be easily moved by forklift. For more integrated operations, the Turbex pilot unit – with its built-in soaking system – can be installed directly into production lines, enabling continuous processing of various raw materials.

IMAGINE A WORLD WHERE EVERYTHING IS USEFUL

It is a true mindset shift to look again at a material your whole industry dismisses as waste and see it afresh as a source of valuable by-products. If processed the right way, instead of being thrown away, tea leaves, fruit peel, coffee grounds, and more can become sources of new products, new revenue, and a more circular, sustainable way of doing business.

It is a shift that is essential for today‘s world. When we discover the value, we can extract from the material we traditionally discard, not only does it reduce waste, it also reduces the need to manufacture the extracted ingredients – polyphenols, proteins, and other complex compounds – by other, more energy- intensive means.

A world where everything is useful is a more sustainable world, and Turbex technology is making that world possible today.