Extraction of polyphenols from pomegranate peels or the other
waste products of food industry is carried out by mostly methanol
or the other organic solvents. This requires consumption of highly
risky organic solvents on operator health and environmental pollution.
PWE was found as an effective technique for extraction of
polyphenols as conventional methanol extraction. The most important
factors on PWE of pomegranate peels were particle size, temperature,
and static extraction time. Extraction of polyphenols in
pomegranate peels could be achieved effectively with PWE by
applying following the factor combinations: temperature as 40 C,
static time as 5 min and as small particle sizes as possible but not
smaller than 65 lm. Modelling and optimisation of PWE with a
convenient experimental design will provide knowledge about
the system and give opportunities to detect the factor interactions
in future studies. Polyphenols in pomegranate peels could be recovered
by PWE without any output loss compared to the conventional
methanol extraction. This technique enables to extract the polyphenols
in a shorter time in comparison to conventional techniques.
Bioactive components of the other economically important waste
products of food industry might be recovered by PWE. The results
clearly show that PWE is an effective technique for extraction of
pomegranate peel polyphenols and could be substitued instead of
classical organic solvent based extraction techniques.