The development of biorefinery processes to platform chemicals for most lignocellulosic substrates, results in side processes to intermediates such as oligosaccharides. Agrofood wastes are most amenable to produce such intermediates, in particular, cellooligo-saccharides (COS), pectooligosaccharides (POS), xylooligosaccharides (XOS) and other less abundant oligomers containing mannose, arabinose, galactose and several sugar acids. These compounds show a remarkable bioactivity as prebiotics, elicitors in plants, food complements, healthy coadyuvants in certain therapies and more. They are medium to high added-value compounds with an increasing impact in the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, cosmetic and food industries. This review is focused on the main production processes: autohydrolysis, acid and basic catalysis and enzymatic saccharification. Autohydrolysis of food residues at 160–190 °C leads to oligomer yields in the 0.06–0.3 g/g dry solid range, while acid hydrolysis of pectin (80–120 °C) or cellulose (45–180 °C) yields up to 0.7 g/g dry polymer. Enzymatic hydrolysis at 40–50 °C of pure polysaccharides results in 0.06–0.35 g/g dry solid (DS), with values in the range 0.08–0.2 g/g DS for original food residues.

Polyphenols have become a research target due to their antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial activity. Obtention via extraction from natural sources includes the revalorization of food wastes such as grape pomace (GP) or apple pomace (AP). In this work, GP and AP were submitted to a liquid–solid extraction using different solvents of industrial interest. Process kinetics were studied measuring the total phenolic content (TPC) and antioxidant capacity (AC), while the extraction liquor composition was analyzed employing chromatographic methods. Extraction processes using water-solvent mixtures stood out as the better options, with a particular preference for water 30%–ethanol 70% (v/v) at 90 °C, a mixture that quickly extracts up to 68.46 mg GAE/gds (Gallic Acid Equivalent per gram dry solid) and 122.67 TEAC/gds (TROLOX equivalent antioxidant capacity per gram dry solid) in case of GP, while ethylene water 10%–ethylene glycol 90% (v/v) at 70 °C allows to reach 27.19 mg GAE/gds and 27.45 TEAC/gds, in the case of AP. These extraction processes can be well-described by a second-order kinetic model that includes a solubility-related parameter for the first and fast-washing and two parameters for the slow mass transfer controlled second extraction phase. AP liquors were found to be rich in quercetin with different sugar moieties and GP extracts highlighted flavonols, cinnamic acids, and anthocyanins. Therefore, using identical extraction conditions for AP and GP and a comparative kinetic analysis of TPC and AC results for the first time, we concluded that ethanol/water mixtures are adequate solvents for polyphenols extraction due to their high efficiency and environmentally benign nature.

Fumaric acid is one of the most promising biorefinery platform chemicals, fruit residues being a very suitable raw material for its production in second generation biorefineries. In particular, apple pomace is a plentiful residue from the apple juice industry, with apple being the second largest fruit crop in the world, with a production that increased from 46 to 86 Mtons in the 1994–2021 period. With a global apple juice production of more than 4.5 Mtons, a similar amount of apple pomace is produced yearly. In this work, apple pomace hydrolysate has been obtained by enzymatic hydrolysis and further characterized for its content in sugars, phenolics and nitrogen using different analytic methods, based on HPLC and colorimetric techniques. Previous to the use of this hydrolysate (APH), we studied if the addition of fructose to the usual glucose-rich broth could lead to high fumaric acid yields, titers and productivities. Afterwards, APH fermentation was performed and improved using different nitrogen initial amounts, obtaining production yields (0.32 g_{Fumaric acid}/g_{consumed sugar}) similar to those obtained with synthetic media (0.38 g_{Fumaric acid}/g_{consumed sugar}). Kinetic modelling was employed to evaluate, explain, and understand the experimental values and trends of relevant components in the fermentation broth as functions of the bioprocess time, proposing a suitable reaction scheme and a non-structured, non-segregated kinetic model based on it.