1. Introduction

The industry of agricultural products processing, or agribusiness, is defined as the economic activity that combines the agricultural productive process with the industrial processing to obtain food or semi-processed raw materials. Among the industrialized products are fruits, vegetables, seeds, tubers and pods; some are marketed fresh and others are transformed into nectars, juices, jams, flours, oils, and wines, among others.

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and eproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

After the processing of these products, agroindustrial waste is obtained. Agroindustrial waste is solid or liquid materials generated from the direct consumption of primary products or its industrialization. Those residues are no longer useful for the process that generated them, but they are susceptible to transformation to obtain another product with economic value, of commercial and social interest [1].

The food industry is characterized by a considerable generation of waste and byproducts. Despite the environmental repercussions that this represents, the amount of agroindustrial waste has increased continuously. Orange peels represent a clear example of agroindustrial waste, which is the result of fruit processing for the production of juices. Due to the large volume of generation and the environmental risk they represent, some investigations have focused on the valorization of this waste through extraction of value-added products or even

Sustainable Sorbent Materials Obtained from Orange Peel as an Alternative for Water Treatment

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Valorization of waste is an attractive approach that offers potentially useful alternatives to treat waste, instead of disposal or landfill deposition. In general, agroindustrial waste possesses varied characteristics, which depend on the raw material and the process that generated those residues; however, they share a similar characteristic, that is the organic matter content, constituted by different percentages of cellulose, lignin, hemicellulose, and pectin. The valorization of food waste components could give numerous possibilities for obtaining value-added products [2]. Figure 1 represents different alternatives for organic residue waste management, on the one hand, the common use of waste that implies it's wasted, and even its contribution to the environment and, on the other hand, some possibilities to use them as materials for environment protection from the use of

In the orange Mexican harvest, the volume of production has averaged 4.3 million tons in the last 6 years. The national market is the main trade of Mexican orange; an average of 67.53% of the supply of fresh oranges is destined for national production; most of them are designated to

Since orange has a high production in the country, as well as in the world, and serves as the main raw material for agroindustrial processing, the amount of fruit marketed to the juicing

The orange processing industry accommodates a small percentage of 32% in the last years [4]. Since 2004, the percentage of fruit destined to the juice agroindustry increased significantly due to government programs which allowed the recovery of the freight and collection costs of the fruit marketed to the Mexican agroindustry of oranges (Table 1). Simple juice and concen-

Production 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 Mexico 83 151 126 159 165 170 EUA 681 607 476 438 383 355 Brazil 1263 980 1230 1006 848 1222

homes, restaurants, street vendors, and hotel chains, among others [3, 4].

trated juice are the main products in the processing of citrus fruits [3].

Table 1. Main producing countries of orange juice, considering 1000 metric tons at 65 BRIX.

transformation to other materials.

sorbent materials.

2. Orange fruit

industry has increased [3].

Figure 1. Alternatives for organic residue waste management.

The food industry is characterized by a considerable generation of waste and byproducts. Despite the environmental repercussions that this represents, the amount of agroindustrial waste has increased continuously. Orange peels represent a clear example of agroindustrial waste, which is the result of fruit processing for the production of juices. Due to the large volume of generation and the environmental risk they represent, some investigations have focused on the valorization of this waste through extraction of value-added products or even transformation to other materials.

Valorization of waste is an attractive approach that offers potentially useful alternatives to treat waste, instead of disposal or landfill deposition. In general, agroindustrial waste possesses varied characteristics, which depend on the raw material and the process that generated those residues; however, they share a similar characteristic, that is the organic matter content, constituted by different percentages of cellulose, lignin, hemicellulose, and pectin. The valorization of food waste components could give numerous possibilities for obtaining value-added products [2]. Figure 1 represents different alternatives for organic residue waste management, on the one hand, the common use of waste that implies it's wasted, and even its contribution to the environment and, on the other hand, some possibilities to use them as materials for environment protection from the use of sorbent materials.
