UC Davis

Citrus production generates a large quantities of residues which can be used in the production of intermediate compounds for the production of value added products which can be used in the synthesis of industrial fine chemicals, fragrances, flavorings, herbicides, pharmaceutical products among others. This work presents a study to increase the value added of essential oils obtained from orange peel producing p-cymene and pectin. Techno-economic and environmental assessments were developed demonstrating that computer-aided process engineering tools can be used to evaluate the feasibility of integrated processes. Two scenarios were evaluated (with and without electricity generation) obtaining 9.22 and 42.63 kg/h with purities of 97 and 81 % of p-cymene and pectin respectively. In the scenario with electricity generation, 99.81 kWh was obtained, covering all requirements in the process. The techno-economic analysis showed that the most appropriate scheme was that without electricity generation reaching a production cost of 5.27 and 3.53 USD/kg of p-cymene and pectin respectively. Environmental analysis reveals that the potential environmental impact was lowest for the scenario without electricity generation.