Valorization of Bioactive Compounds from Shrimp Shells: Comparison between Ultrasound-Assisted and Subcritical-Water Extractions

In recent years, shrimp consumption has increased, resulting in massive amounts of waste. In this study, different extraction techniques, namely, ultrasound-assisted extraction (UAE), subcritical-water extraction (SWE) and conventional extraction (CE), were tested to evaluate their efficiency in recovering bioactive compounds from shrimp shells. SWE performed at 200 °C was the extraction technique that allowed for the highest recovery of polyphenolic and carotenoid compounds (5.43 ± 0.17 mgGAE/g dw and 59.9 ± 1.0 μg carotenoids/g dw) as well as the highest antioxidant activity in ABTS and FRAP assays (7.93 ± 0.01 and 4.35 ± 0.31 mgAAE/g dw). These results demonstrate the potential of shrimp shells, which can be further incorporated into other products.