Abstract
Exergy analysis shed light on how efficiently a cascade biorefinery uses available resources, as these systems are essential for enabling a circular bioeconomy and therefore must maximize mass and energy utilization. However, it can overlook the effect of variations on operative parameters that affect process exergy efficiency. For this reason, in this study an exergy resilience sensibility analysis is carried out for a cascade biorefinery for avocado hard waste. The analysis is complemented by simulation tools as source of process data. Several scenarios were analysed based on the biorefinery and its unit’s performance. The results showed that the biorefinery is dominated by high irreversibilities and underutilized high-quality waste streams. The process is very sensible to improvement, especially from a combine waste stream valorisation and targeted optimization using heat integration strategies. The first strategy obtained an increase up to 52% when all streams are reused, and a reduction of half of the base losses (1000 MJ/h). The improvement of local exergy efficiency of key stages (starch extraction and biocontrol stages) also has a strong impact on system performance. However, the process has an efficiency limit of approximately 50–52%, were the unavoidable losses dominated the process total losses, addressing these complex inefficiencies can increase the process efficiency near 55%. Nevertheless, achieving such improvements would require structural and operational modifications, as these types of losses are strongly linked to intrinsic process design.
