Combating food waste is a vital 21st
century global challenge befitting of green and sustainable chemistry.
Prevention is the first and foremost route for reduction of food waste,
but inevitably, there are unavoidable food losses as a result of primary
and secondary processing that represents an interesting green and
sustainable chemistry valorization opportunity. Herein, pea vine waste
(Pisum sativum) as an unavoidable food
supply chain waste is explored as the source for (bio)renewable chemicals
and materials and as a potential bioenergy source. Through a cascade
approach simulating a potential biorefinery, pea vine waste was subjected
to pseudosubcritical water extraction as a green extraction methodology
technique to extract potential platform molecules: 5-hydroxy furfural
(HMF); ethanoic acid; sugars (levoglucosenone, rhamnose, xylose, fructose,
glucose and sucrose); and a precipitated biopolymer showing pectinaceous
and starch-like characteristics as evidenced by infrared spectroscopy,
solid-state <sup>13</sup>C NMR, and thermogravimetric analysis. The
postextraction residues of pea vine waste were further subjected to
microwave pyrolysis to produce a bio-oil and a biochar. The bio-oil
is rich in phenolic compounds while the biochar has a gross calorific
value of 26.6 MJ kg<sup>–1</sup> and thus may be used as a
potential source of bioenergy. While peas alone have been explored
previously, the work within represents the first study of valorization
of pea vine wastes, a real as-received industrial problematic waste
source, using a cascade approach of pseudo-sub-critical water and
microwave pyrolysis simulating a potential biorefinery
