Evaluating the feasibility of a pilot-scale shrimp biorefinery via techno-economic analysis

The foreseen increase in the demand of chitin, chitosan and astaxanthin by 2027 reveals a business opportunity within shrimp industries to boost net profits through waste valorization strategies such as shrimp shell wastes (SSW) biorefining. The incorporation of biorefinery approaches in the conventional shrimp processing may represent an attractive project option to meet market demand. In this work, a pilot-scale shrimp biorefinery was assessed using economic, techno-economic sensitivity, and environmental assessment tools to determine project feasibility and potential impacts on the media. The proposed biorefinery with a processing capacity of 4110.37 t/yr of fresh shrimp showed to be profitable reporting economic indicators at 1.12 million (MM) USD and 0.26/yr for the net present value and cumulative cash flow metric, respectively. Regrading techno-economic sensibility analysis, the process revealed susceptibility to changes in raw material costs, especially for fresh shrimp and ethanol prices. The human health potential was estimated in 7.17·10−9 CTUh/kg shrimp meat, while the ecotoxicity potential reported 2.59 CTUeco/kg shrimp meat. The major contributor to the potential impacts for global warming, photochemical smog, and acidification categories was the emissions coming from chitin recovery. The mapping of improvement opportunities revealed that centrifugation 2 stage has significant contributions to the photochemical smog and ecotoxicity categories. These results suggested the promising sustainability performance of the pilot shrimp-based biorefinery located in North-Colombia; however, design improvements are encouraged to reduce the consumption of organic solvents within the recovery stages.