Expired
energy drinks are rich in bioactive value-added compounds
that can be recovered and reused in order to valorize food waste within
a circular economy perspective. However, to accomplish such requirements,
it is necessary to develop sustainable extraction and recovery processes,
which must consist of decreasing the number of steps required or developing
integrated strategies. In this work, novel aqueous biphasic systems
(ABS) composed of ionic liquids (ILs) and a biocompatible polymer
polypropylene glycol (400 g·mol–1, PPG 400)
were studied for the simultaneous extraction and recovery of three
value-added compounds, namely, caffeine, taurine, and niacin, from
expired energy drinks. ILs were designed and synthesized in order
to have similar anions to the target compounds, thus allowing enhanced
selectivity and biological activity, while avoiding an extra step
of separation of these high-value compounds from the IL-rich phase.
To this end, cholinium-based ILs comprising the anions lactate, pyruvate,
taurate, and nicotinate were synthesized, and their cytotoxicity and
ecotoxicity credentials were evaluated. Overall, taurine and niacin
are majorly enriched in the IL-rich phase, while caffeine preferentially
migrates in the majority of the cases toward the PPG-rich phase. However,
caffeine also partitions to the IL-rich phase in the ABS formed by
cholinium pyruvate or cholinium nicotinate. The ABS formed by cholinium
nicotinate and PPG 400 is the best system identified, allowing the
almost complete recovery (recovery efficiencies > 82%) of all target
compounds into the IL-rich phase in one step. Furthermore, cholinium
nicotinate exhibits marginal cytotoxic potential and is harmless from
an ecotoxicological point of view. This system is thus a promising
platform to simultaneously extract, recover, and reuse value-added
compounds from expired energy drinks without the need of removing
the IL or recovering the target compounds from the IL-rich phase,
thus contributing to a sustainable and circular food economy.