Biorefineries to improve water and resource recovery in the seafood-processing industry

Food losses are responsible for noteworthy economic costs and negative environmental impacts. Within all the food-processing activities, seafood industry is of high importance, especially in coastal regions. Most seafood wastage is currently removed and discarded without recovering the valuable materials that it contains. However, seafood waste can be used as raw matter in biorefineries. Biorefineries refer to facilities where different conversion processes are integrated to obtain multiple bioproducts from organic feedstock. To this aim, different physical, chemical, thermochemical, and biological processes can be implemented to obtain biofertilizers, biostimulants, biofuels, and other value-added biocompounds. This chapter focuses on the theoretical implementation of biorefineries fed by wastes coming from the seafood industry. Some processes and technologies are reviewed, as well as some biocompounds that can be obtained from seafood wastes.