Abstract
Microwave assistance is an optimum strategy to shorten time, solvent, and
energy consumption during the extraction of target solutes from different sources. This
intensification strategy has been successfully applied to laboratory methods to enhance
the extraction performance of a number of bioactive compounds of interest for food,
cosmetic and pharmaceutical applications. This chapter presents an overview of the
fundamentals, equipment configurations, combinations with other techniques, and
some representative applications for the extraction of compounds from food products
and byproducts.