Instituto de Biotecnología y Agroindustria, Universidad Nacional de Colombia Sede Manizales, Manizales, Caldas, Colombia.
Instituto de Biotecnología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2018 Dec;25(36):35949-35959. doi: 10.1007/s11356-018-2313-7. Epub 2018 May 23.
During last decades, there has been a growing interest of decreasing the environmental impact generated by humans. This situation has been approached from different perspectives being the integral use of raw materials as one of the best alternatives. It was estimated that 3.7 × 10 tonnes of agricultural residues are produced annually worldwide. Then, the integral use of feedstocks has been studied through the biorefinery concept. A biorefinery can be a promissory option for processing feedstocks in rural zones aiming to boost the techno-economic and social growth. However, many plants produced at small scale in rural zones without high industrial use contribute with residues usually not studied as raw materials for other processes. Cocoyam (Xanthosoma sagittifolium) is a plant grown extensively in tropical regions. Nigeria, China, and Ghana are the main producers with 1.3, 1.18, and 0.9 million tonnes/year, respectively. In Colombia, there are no technified crops, but it is used where it is grown mainly as animal feed. This plant consists of leaves, stem, and a tuber but the use is generally limited to the leaves, discarding the other parts. These discarded parts have great potential (lignocellulose and starch). This work proposes different processing schemes using the parts of the plant to obtain value-added products, and their techno-economic and environmental assessment. The simulation was performed with Aspen Plus and the economic package was used for the economic assessment. For the environmental assessment, Waste Algorithm Reduction of the U.S. EPA was implemented. The obtained results showed that the integral use of plants under a biorefinery scheme allows obtaining better techno-economic and environmental performance and that small-scale biorefineries can be a promissory option for boosting rural zones.
在过去的几十年中，人们越来越关注减少人类活动对环境的影响。人们从不同的角度来解决这个问题，其中一个最佳的选择是综合利用原材料。据估计，全世界每年产生 3.7×10 吨农业废弃物。因此，人们通过生物炼制的概念来研究原料的综合利用。生物炼制厂可以作为处理农村地区原料的有前途的选择，旨在促进技术经济和社会发展。然而，许多在农村地区小规模生产、工业用途不高的工厂会产生通常不作为其他工艺原料的残留物。芋（Xanthosoma sagittifolium）是一种广泛生长在热带地区的植物。尼日利亚、中国和加纳是主要的生产国，分别为 130 万吨/年、118 万吨/年和 90 万吨/年。在哥伦比亚，没有经过技术处理的作物，但在种植地主要用作动物饲料。这种植物由叶子、茎和块茎组成，但通常只使用叶子，而将其他部分丢弃。这些被丢弃的部分具有很大的潜力（木质纤维素和淀粉）。本工作提出了使用植物各部分获得增值产品的不同加工方案，并对其进行了技术经济和环境评估。使用 Aspen Plus 进行模拟，并使用经济包进行经济评估。对于环境评估，实施了美国环保署的废物算法减少。得到的结果表明，在生物炼制厂方案下综合利用植物可以获得更好的技术经济和环境性能，并且小规模的生物炼制厂可以成为促进农村地区发展的有前途的选择。
