Recovery of proanthocyanidin from waste of Turkish traditional product, pekmez (molasses)

The possibility of recovering of proanthocyanidin (PA) from the by-product of Turkish traditional product pekmez (molasses) industry, one of the agro industries, was investigated. In order to obtain optimum extraction conditions, the effects of different solvents and their aqueous forms were studied and the highest PA concentration was achieved as 31 (+/- 0.68) g/L with acetone/water (30: 70, v/v) solution. The correlations between phenolic contents, PA concentrations and antioxidant capacities were shown. Antioxidant capacities of extracts were determined and the comparison of them with synthetic and commercial antioxidants was performed. The antioxidant capacity of PA extract from grape seed of molasses pomace was 93 (+/- 1.43) TEAC values, which was relatively high compared with those of the synthetic antioxidants. Silk fibroin was used as a novel adsorbent to recover the PA from the grape seed extracts. Effect of parameters such as, solid-liquid ratio, pH and initial concentration of PA on the recovery performance was investigated. All parameters were found statistically significant parameters (P<0.005) and the best adsorption conditions were found to be pH 5.5, initial concentration as 10g/ml and solid-liquid ratio as 0.1 g/ml, which yielded the maximum percentage of adsorbed PA amount as 85.2%.