Chemistry Proposal Defense – Suvanker Saha

About the event

Speaker: Suvanker Saha

Group: Dr. Shulin Chen

Title: Extraction kinetics, purification, and process optimization of potato peel-derived polyphenols

ABSTRACT

Potato peels are a unique agro-industrial by-product and a promising source of phenolic compounds for food and nutraceutical applications. This study proposes a focused, food-grade process to recover a chlorogenic acid-rich phenolic concentrate from waste potato peels. Objective 1 will quantify the release of free, esterified, and bound phenolic fractions during benchmark aqueous extraction and subcritical water extraction, with targeted analysis of major phenolic acids and co-extracted glycoalkaloids. Objective 2 will develop and validate a reduced mechanistic model describing diffusion, matrix rupture/desorption, and thermal degradation, and will use the model to identify operating conditions that maximize phenolic recovery and selectivity while minimizing degradation. Objective 3 will evaluate a targeted ultrafiltration-nanofiltration polishing strategy to produce a food-grade phenolic concentrate and determine whether the added separation step is economically justified relative to the sale of the crude extract. The anticipated outputs are a composition-resolved extraction dataset, a predictive process model, membrane-separation performance data, and decision-grade technoeconomic results to support industrial valorization of potato-peel waste.  These results will be documented in three refereed journal papers to provide the scientific insights into optimizing the extraction and purification processes.