Abstract
Resource use is a key factor for hindering the adoption of avocado biorefineries, especially energy, as inefficient use of energy resources causes higher operating costs and environmental impacts. As cascade biorefineries have emerged as promising technologies for upgrading avocado waste, the need for efficient systems has become crucial. Nonetheless, barely any work has explored how efficiently these novel systems use mass and energy resources. In that case, in this study the resource management of an avocado cascade biorefinery was performed through an exergy analysis, where a series of performance parameters are calculated, which include efficiency, irreversibilities, and industrial services, among others. The analysis was complemented with CAPE tools, like process simulators. The exergy analysis showed that the process had a poor efficiency of 1.5%, with high losses (1950 MJ/h), especially from waste streams (more than 50% of the total), indicating the cascade configuration is not valorizing fully the raw material. The same result was observed for its stages with efficiencies lower than 10%, with only the seed conditioning having an efficiency above 80%. Moreover, the starch extraction and the biocontrol agent production combined had almost 90% of the total losses. Consequently, the process requires extensive improvements to increase its resource conservation, strategies based on process integration are recommended.
