Sustainable extraction of bioactive compounds: a life cycle perspective on technologies, solvents, and process scale-up

Abstract

The extraction of bioactive natural compounds is crucial to the pharmaceutical, food, and cosmetic industries, but it often entails high energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and environmental impacts associated with solvent use. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) provides a structured approach to identify environmental hotspots and evaluate trade-offs across solvent use, energy demand, and process scale-up. This review adopts a life-cycle perspective to examine the environmental impacts from upstream stages, including agriculture, raw material processing, and transportation, to extraction, waste management, and end-of-life treatment. Extraction technologies, including microwave-assisted, ultrasound-assisted, solvent-based, pressurized liquid, and high-voltage electrical discharge methods, are compared in terms of environmental performance and process efficiency. Solvent selection is highlighted as a critical factor, with a focus on the balance between extraction yield and sustainability across water, organic, and deep eutectic solvents. The integration of LCA with simulation tools, such as SuperPro Designer and Aspen Plus, is also reviewed for its potential to support scaling-up decisions and resource optimization. Although current LCA studies provide valuable insights, gaps remain in addressing energy constraints, waste flows, and real-world implementation. Advancing sustainable extraction requires a combination of system-level design, data-driven modeling, and circular resource utilization.