Extraction of Pectin from Orange Peels and Characterizing Its Physical and Chemical Properties

The aim of this study was to extract pectin from orange peels. In order to increase profits for citrus orange growers and processors, citrus orange peels, a by-product of citrus orange processing, were investigated as a source of pectin. An orange, specifically, the sweet orange is the most commonly grown tree orange in Ethiopia. The present work addressed to the development of the part of the process needed for the extraction of value added products like pectin from orange peel, which is the waste of orange juice processing industry. The outcome of the present work highlighted that the sweet orange peels are good source of pectin and does have the potential to become important raw material for food processing industries. It was found from the experimental observations that the peel source. It was concluded that the process in which pectin was first extracted using technique of water bathing or drying followed by acid extraction of pectin was most suitable for industrial production for isolation of pectin. These results demonstrated the pectin, providing potential benefits for industrial extraction of pectin from an economic and environmental point of view. It was possible that pectin loss was occurring during the precipitation step and the alcohol washes. There was a large cloudy mass within the liquid that was possibly pectin that was not being recovered and retained in the following separation and washing steps. Experiments were set up to test the method of retrieving the pectin from the alcohol after precipitation. Experiments were conducted under standard extraction conditions comparing centrifugation and cheesecloth as retrieval methods for the precipitated pectin. The pectin yields for the centrifugation and cheesecloth methods were 14.3% and 10.6%, respectively. These results indicated that more pectin was retained using the centrifugation method