Grant: Engage Grants Program

Bayview Greenhouses Inc., is a commercial greenhouse located in Jordan Station, ON (Jordan Station). They receive a considerable amount of grape pomace (1700 tons/Year) from several local wineries in ON. Bayview intended to develop value-added products from their grape pomace for food and cosmetic purposes, but were faced with challenging problems with the processing of grape pomace and developing a product with high potential for the above applications. However, because they do not have the in-house capabilities, analytical tools and sufficient research personnel to solve this problem, Bayview turned to our lab for a partnership as we have an extensive expertise on developing value-added products from agri-food by-products and waste. Tosolve the above problem, we will use a potential innovative approach to extract the grape seed oil and phenolics from the pomace to produce microemulsions. The majority of surfactants are synthesized chemically (e.g. propylene glycol), causing hazardous environmental and toxicological problems. Both the oil and phenolics from grape pomace are valuable natural bioproducts/bioactives that will be used to develop microemulsions with high potential application in food and cosmetic products. The oil will be extracted from the seed and phenolic from the pulp and skins using Supercritical-CO2 (SC-CO2) as a green solvent-free technique. HPLC, GC and MS will be used to characterize compounds of interests (mainly phenolic acids, flavonoids and fatty acids from oil). Accordingly, oil and phenolics from the grape pomace will be used in combination as surfactant and co-surfactant to develop a microemulsion system. The outcome of this project will help Bayview to invest on more projects through knowledge transfer, research and development, placing the company at the forefront in the market.