Process design and techno-economic analysis of a pineapple wine production plant under the context of the Choco-Colombia region

Pineapple surplus in the region of Choco-Colombia, the selection process that involves its commercialization and being a rapidly perishable fruit, causes serious losses for farmers. Due to the high content of sugars, it is anticipated that discarded fruit juice can be used as a substrate for the development of bioprocesses to obtain value-added products on an industrial scale. A new model for a 1600 ton / year pineapple wine production plant has been developed with Aspen Plus® v10.0 (Aspentech, Cambridge, MA). It is observed that the cost of the raw material and the fixed manufacturing costs have the greatest impact on the operating cost with 29 and 28% respectively, the capital cost are estimated in US$ 15.52 million, on the other hand the plant generates 2210 tons of pineapple bagasse as solid waste and emits of 162.3 tons of CO₂ per year.