Pectin is a complex mixture of polysaccharides widely applied in food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industry. The increasing demand of pectin has caused the search of raw materials for extracting process such as cocoa husks, sisal waste, peach pomace, banana peel and Citrullus lanatus fruit rinds. In this research, economic feasibility was applied for industrial implementation of pectin extraction process from cocoa pod husk (Theobroma cacao L.) by hydrolysis with citric acid using commercial software Aspen Plus v8.0. Aspen Process Economic Evaluator was used to perform economic evaluation, obtaining as results an Internal Rate of Return (IRR) of 33% and Payback Period (PP) of 4 years, which indicates that the proposed process is profitable.
Pectin is an important plant cell component extracted from by-products of plant material such as citrus peels, sisal waste and peach pomace. Conventional acid extraction process includes the acidification of feedstock by a mineral or organic acid during time and using hot water. Because of the wide range of applications for pectin, alternative sources and extraction process have been studied in order to satisfy the increasing demand, improve efficiency and reduce costs. In this research, energy integration analysis was applied to pectin extraction process from cocoa pod husk (Theobroma cacao L.) by hydrolysis with citric acid; the results indicated that heating and cooling energy requirements savings of 93.8% and 57.7%, respectively, might be obtained, which make of this process a project with even a greater economic potential.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.