Structural features of spent coffee grounds water-soluble polysaccharides: towards tailor-made microwave assisted extractions

This work studies the microwave-assisted extraction conditions for recovery of polysaccharides from spent coffee grounds, including their effect on arabinogalactans and galactomannans polymerization and branching structural features. Temperature (140, 170, and 200 °C) has the most significant impact on total extracted mass (ηtotal soluble solids) and sugars yield (ηsugars), arabinogalactans (ηAG) and galactomannans (ηGM), and polysaccharide mass ratio (ηAG/ηGM). Time (2, 5, and 10 min) and alkali (diluted 0.1 M NaOH) treatments have less influence. Alkali treatment and shorter time (2 min) provided a protective effect against polysaccharides degradation. At 170 °C, the yield of arabinogalactans was found to be significantly higher than that of galactomannans (ηAG/ηGM >1). Increasing temperature to 200 °C leads to decrease the polymerization of polysaccharides, promoting the formation of debranched polysaccharides and oligosaccharides. This study shows that the optimum conditions for polysaccharides extraction cannot be selected only by mass yield but need to be defined according to the desired structural features for the specific applications.