Marine microalgae and seaweeds (microalgae) represent a sustainable source of various bioactive natural carotenoids, including β-carotene, lutein, astaxanthin, zeaxanthin, violaxanthin and fucoxanthin. Recently, the large-scale production of carotenoids from algal sources has gained significant interest with respect to commercial and industrial applications for health, nutrition, and cosmetic applications. Although conventional processing technologies, based on solvent extraction, offer a simple approach to isolating carotenoids, they suffer several, inherent limitations, including low efficiency (extraction yield), selectivity (purity), high solvent consumption, and long treatment times, which have led to advancements in the search for innovative extraction technologies. This comprehensive review summarizes the recent trends in the extraction of carotenoids from microalgae and seaweeds through the assistance of different innovative techniques, such as pulsed electric fields, liquid pressurization, supercritical fluids, subcritical fluids, microwaves, ultrasounds, and high-pressure homogenization. In particular, the review critically analyzes technologies, characteristics, advantages, and shortcomings of the different innovative processes, highlighting the differences in terms of yield, selectivity, and economic and environmental sustainability.

In the last decades, several non-thermal technologies have been proposed as alternative to the traditional ones to improve the competitiveness of the food industry. The key to success was identified in offering to food industries the opportunity to improve food quality, to introduce new foods in the market, and to optimize the processing procedures while reducing energy costs. Pulsed electric fields (PEF) showed the potential to be one of the most promising novel technologies to reach these objectives.\ud The application of PEF as a pretreatment of permeabilization of vegetable and animal tissue to enhance the efficiency of mass transfer of water or of valuable compounds from biological matrices demonstrated its efficiency in drying, extraction, and diffusion processes. \ud This article reviews the basic mechanisms of electroporation of plant tissues, discusses the methods of detection of electrically\ud induced cell damage, and analyses the influence of process parameters on the efficiency of the treatment.\ud Furthermore, this article focuses on the applications of PEF, its advantages, and energy costs in different fields of food processing, such as juice expression, drying, and extraction, with special emphasis on the relevance of PEF to the winemaking industry

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Fossil resources-free sustainable development can be achieved through a transition to bioeconomy, an economy based on sustainable biomass-derived food, feed, chemicals, materials, and fuels. However, the transition to bioeconomy requires development of new energy-efficient technologies and processes to manipulate biomass feed stocks and their conversion into useful products, a collective term for which is biorefinery. One of the technological platforms that will enable various pathways of biomass conversion is based on pulsed electric fields applications (PEF). Energy efficiency of PEF treatment is achieved by specific increase of cell membrane permeability, a phenomenon known as membrane electroporation. Here, we review the opportunities that PEF and electroporation provide for the development of sustainable biorefineries. We describe the use of PEF treatment in biomass engineering, drying, deconstruction, extraction of phytochemicals, improvement of fermentations, and biogas production. These applications show the potential of PEF and consequent membrane electroporation to enable the bioeconomy and sustainable development.

The application of pulsed electric field (PEF) technology as a non-thermal cell membrane permeabilization treatment,\ud was widely demonstrated widely to be effective in microbial inactivation studies, as well as to increase the\ud rates of heat and mass transfer phenomena in food and biotechnological processes (drying, osmotic treatment,\ud freezing, extraction, and diffusion). Nevertheless,most published papers on the topic do not provide enough information\ud for other researchers to assess results properly. A general rule/guidance in reporting experimental data and\ud most of all exposure conditions,would be to report details to the extent that other researchers will be able to repeat,\ud judge and evaluate experiments and data obtained. This iswhat is described in the present recommendation paper.\ud Industrial relevance: Pulsed electric field (PEF) treatment is a promising technology that has received considerable\ud attention in food and biotechnology related applications food and biotechnology related applications of PEF\ud include:\ud i) “cold” pasteurization of liquid foods and disinfection of wastewater by microbial inactivation\ud ii) PEF-assisted processing (drying, extraction or expression