Development of a biorefinery approach for shrimp processing in North-Colombia: Process simulation and sustainability assessment

Abstract The valorization of wastes based on the circular economy approach is key to cleaner and more efficient production in the shrimp industry. This work introduces a scaled-up technology for the integrated valorization of fresh shrimp under biorefinery concept. To date, no contributions are available in the literature regarding the process simulation and sustainability assessment of a shrimp biorefinery topology. The proposed topology was simulated using Aspen Plus ® software to process 469.22 kg/h of fresh shrimp according to the local production in North Colombia. The desired products were shrimp meat, chitin, chitosan and astaxanthin. The environmental performance of this biorefinery was analyzed using the Waste Reduction Algorithm (WAR), while the process economy was determined through net present value (NPV) and return on investment (ROI) indicators. The effects of expanding the design capacity on socio-environmental and economic aspects were assessed via the sustainability-extended ROI metric The global production yield was estimated at 600.89 g products/kg fresh shrimp and technical efficiencies per process section up to 92.89%. It was quantified low potential environmental impacts (PEIs) emitted to the media through residual streams as well as negative values of PEIs generation in most toxicological and atmospheric categories. The project was profitable reaching a positive value for NPV and ROI at 13.53%. This shrimp biorefinery topology showed attractive findings from a technical, economic and environmental point of view at design capacities ≥ 275.79 kg meat/h.