Techno-economic Sensitivity Analysis of Large Scale Chitosan Production Process from Shrimp Shell Wastes

Abstract

Chitin is one the most abundant natural amino-polysaccharides in nature, it is found in the exoskeleton of many arthropods on earth, being the main component of these ones. Great quantities of crustaceans are processed daily for human consumption, generating big shell wastes to should be correctly treated and give them a final disposal that not bringing environmental concerns to fishing industry. There are potential uses of these shell wastes, and one of them is the extraction of chitosan from chitin present in these wastes. In this work was developed the economic evaluation and the techno-economic sensitivity analysis of the large-scale production of chitosan from shrimp shell wastes via depigmentation, demineralization, deproteinization and deacetylation of chitin, using the ethanol-based route, which employs ten units of operation, in order to analyze the behavior of the process under changes of the techno-economic environment of the process as break-even point, on-stream efficiency, raw material cost, among others. Results shows that for a processing capacity of 57,000 t/y of shell waste with a plant life of 15 y, located in North Colombia, the critical techno-economic variables were raw material costs which with an increase in 100 % of price decreases the Profit After Taxes (PAT) close to zero, product selling price and normalized variable operating costs (NVOC).