4. Conclusions
Supercritical CO2 extraction of lycopene from tomato peels by product was conducted with the use of indigenous oil from tomato seed obtained along with tomato peels. This work emphasizes that the by-products used for raw material are more meaningfully than that reported by other researchers who used different vegetable oil. The optimum operating conditions for lycopene extraction was a temperature of 90 C, pressure of 40 MPa, a particle size of 1.05 ± 0.10 mm, and ratio of tomato peel to seed of 37/63. Under these conditions, 56% of lycopene could be extracted, whereas 44% of the lycopene remained both in the pipeline and the solid matrix. The presence of fatty acid content in the tomato seed oil improved recovery of lycopene extracted from 18% to 56%.