Citrus Fibers

The beneficial effects of natural dietary fibre, bran constituents of cereals and pectin-containing structural carbohydrates of vegetables and fruits are well known. Dietary fibre is a loosely defined group of substances found in most foodstuffs from plant origin including cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin, and pectic substances.  Dietary fibre provide little food energy and is traditionally regarded as undigestible matter. It should be emphasized that crude fibre and dietary fibre are not synonymous; crude fibre is a chemically partially purified cellulose, while dietary fibre contains crude fibre cellulose plus all of the insoluble polymers mentioned above. Lignin is composed of repeating units of phenylpropane always closely associated to cellulose and is the only noncarbohydrate polymer in dietary fibre. Most fruits, including citrus, are low in cellulose and lignin and high in hemicelluloses and pectic substances, There are no digestive enzymes in the human digestive tract that can hydrolyze these polymers to simple sugars, so they arrive in the stomach unchanged and there hydrochloric acid breaks up plant cellular structures by breaking salt linkages and hydrogen bonds without affecting carbohydrate polymers structures. Intestinal bacteria in the colon produce enzymes that can partially hydrolyze (and utilize)amorphous cellulose, hemicelluloses and pectic substances. By-products include volatile fatty acids carbon dioxide, methane and degraded polysaccharide residues. The presence of these products of microbial metabolism plus residual unaltered dietary fibres affects transit time of meals through the gastrointestinal tract.
In addition to its ability to lower transit time trought the gastrointestinal tract, some components of dietary fibre can bind with and aid to eliminate bile metabolites excreted into the gut, have hypocolesterol effect and aid fecal elimination.

Pectins are the most important group of polyuronid carboidrates in citrus.Pectins are mainly contained in albedo and can be defined as intracellular bond of many cellular tissues. Pectins are assimilated to "dietary Fiber" concept as defined as "residue of cell walls resistant to hydrolisis by human digestive enzymes". Fibers can be soluble (oats, soybean,, pectins, gums) and insoluble (cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin).

Citrus pectin is not digested by human beings unless it's treated in order to decreas chain lenght, making "smaller pieces" that could be absorbed by human body.

Citrech has the technology to produce dry, insoluble dietary fiber starting from waste peels after juice recovery. Peels contain, in average, 7% of mono adn disaccharides nad about 3% of polysaccharides of wich most part are pectins, cellulose and hemicellulose.

To recovery fibers to be used for human consumption is necessary to eliminate sugars and micronutrients contained in order to have an easily pressable press-cake to make drying economic. Moreover sugars and micronutrient would impact organoleptic characterisitics of final fiber causing browning and bitter taste. 
Objective can be match using counter.current water extraction and specif treatments to move away bitter substances obtaining an high added value dry fiber