Abstract
Supply chains in Creole-Antillean avocado production are not highly efficient in Colombia and large quantities of this product are wasted due to fruit deterioration. There, it is important to identify alternatives of waste valorization such as avocado oil production. To assess the viability of large-scale avocado oil production from a sustainability point of view, related to the quality of energy conservation, decision-making tools such as exergy analysis must be applied. In this work, an exergy analysis was carried out to identify sources of irreversibilities within the large-scale production of such oil. The conversion of avocado pulp into oil was simulated through the software Aspen plus ® to obtain the extended mass and energy balances. The chemical and physical exergies were quantified and used to calculate the global exergetic efficiency as well as the efficiency by stages of the process. From this analysis, it was found that the stage with the highest waste exergy corresponds to the centrifugation stage. Likewise, it is possible to observe that the greatest irreversibilities in the process occur in the solvent distillation, condensation, and cooling stage 2,754.49 MJ/h. The peel and seed separation showed an exergetic efficiency of 99.0 %, while the overall exergy of the process obtained was 26.80 %. This work provided insights into the energetic performance of avocado oil production.
