Abstract
Circular bioeconomy has arisen as a promising opportunity for economic and sustainable growth in agricultural regions. Biorefineries have become a center of interest as they are a cornerstone in this new economic system. Among them, the cascade biorefineries are a more complete system to fully valorize waste and organic material. However, these systems operational and efficiency have not been studied, identifying main bottlenecks and potential improvements. For this reason, in this study the technical performance of a cascade biorefinery system for valorizing avocado waste is implemented. The biorefinery had multiple outputs, as starch, biofilms and biocontrol agent were considered as products. The analysis WEP showed that the process has regular mass and energy management requiring further improvement. As the process had low yield (20%) and poor material reuse (11%) tied to the products intended, furthermore, the wastewater production is the worst aspect of the process (9%), to the contrast of the water intake and cost, that were particularly acceptable with performance above 65%. Likewise, energy indicators had similar results, as energy intake was acceptable (65%), but the management was poor with an NER performance of 15%. These highlights reaffirmed the necessity of further optimization of cascade systems, especially using integration techniques with more rigorous sustainability assessments.
