Sustainable Valorization of (Lour.) Pers. Residue as the New Lauric Oil Source Using Alternative Green Extraction and Refining Methods.

is an ethnic woody oil plant, in which essential oil rather than oil has been the main foreign trade product through the decades. Concerning large amounts of residue generated from essential oil processing, a sustainable valorization pathway of these biowastes is proposed in this study. First, such biowastes have been systematically investigated for the first time regarding their oils extracted by three extraction methods, where ultrasound-assisted extraction (UAE) could significantly improve the extraction rate of traditional pressing and solvent extraction without any changes in oil quality. Moreover, the composition of acylglycerols and fatty acids in fruit, kernel, and peel oils were also first identified, which further proved that peels with abundant free fatty acids could lead to high acid value of fruit oils. Compared to virgin coconut oils, kernel oils have a more balanced fatty acid composition with a high lauric acid level, which could be applied as a promising lauric oil resource. Considering the high acid value in kernel oils, both decoloration using activated clay and alkali deacidification were attempted, where the combination of alkali deacidification and 10% of activated clay performed the best considering both quality and cost.