Performance evaluation and economic analysis of the bioethanol and flour production using rejected unripe plantain fruits (Musa paradisiaca L.) as raw material

Plantain needs to accomplish different quality conditions to be exported. Nevertheless, organoleptic aspects contribute to rejecting more than 20% of the plantain production generating environmental problems. Therefore, this study aims to perform the techno-economic analysis of the bioethanol and plantain flour production using unripe plantain as raw material. For this, different scenarios were proposed and simulated. The first scenario comprises the production of bioethanol and plantain flour using whole plantain flour (with peel), while the second scenario uses separately the peel and pulp. Then, an overall analysis of the mass and energy performance of the processes as well as an economic assessment in Colombia, and Mexico was done. The starch content of peel (39.4%) and pulp (84.2%) in the unripe plantain fruits allows proposing this raw material to produce flour and bioethanol. Moreover, the calorific value obtained for the peel and pulp flours (15.32 MJ/kg and 15.12 MJ/kg, respectively) allows elucidating a high potential of this raw material to be upgraded in biotechnological processes. The simulation results suggest that plantain flour with peel has a better process performance than the use of separately the peel and pulp in the flour and bioethanol production. Moreover, flour with peel has greater potential, especially to produce foodstuffs due to the nutritional content, commercial value and, defined market. Instead, the lower annual operating costs in México make a difference to obtain a more profitable project compared with the Colombian case. Finally, the rejected plantain has the potential to be used as a raw material to obtain flour. However, other energy vectors such as biogas could be better than bioethanol as an option to increase the number of products from this raw material at low scales. Therefore, rejected plantain represents an entrepreneurship opportunity to obtain marketable products at a local and regional level.