Natural plant materials for cosmetic, beauty and health industry
Pilot projects have been set up to extract natural plant pigments from fruit and vegetable by-product waste. Currently Blackberry, Beetroot, Tomato and Strawberry are being investigated. Anthocyanin, lycopene and isoflavones extraction techniques will be investigated, including their potential to be used in natural cosmetic products.
Coordination: NIAB
Activitites 2019
31 October 2019
A report about the results of the pilot has been published. The report can be found in the publications section.
Activities 2018
- Refinement of the blackberry extraction process investigated enzyme disruption of pectin, filtration and resin recycle. The process first stage process was scaled up to 130kg fruit input, screw pressing the fruit to remove bulk biomass.
- Dried blackcurrant pomace extraction was compared to fresh fruit. Fresh fruit yielded much higher levels of pigment than dried pomace.
- More work on spent coffee ground showed insufficient colour remained for viable recovery compounded by unwanted fat contamination.
Activities 2017
The test facility has been set up at the NIAB site at Hasse Fern where high quality phytochemicals are now being extracted and are being pilot tested for cosmetic products.
For different soft fruits, such a strawberry and black currant extraction and purification test are carried out. Also some applications are tested such as colouring agent for fabrics.
Partners
