Application of banana waste in the production of value-added co-products by anaerobic biological processes

Abstract

The Fruit Processing Industry is one of the most important sectors of the economy in the world, and Brazil iscurrently the third largest fruit producer in the world. Banana production has become one of the prominent segments in agribusiness. However, the generation of waste in the sector has generated an increasing environmental and economic concern, since a large part of the fruit processing residues are normally dumped inrivers, oceans, landfills and unregulated dumps, causing damage to the environment. The reuse of these residuesas raw material in biological processes allows the recovery of value-added products with the concomitante production of bioenergy, emerging as an alternative solution to the problem of their disposal and integrating in the concept of biorefinery, where there is valorization of by-products and minimization remaining residues improperly disposed. Based on this, the present project aims at biological production of biogas by anaerobic processes, through an integrated system composed of fermentative reactors followed by methanogenic reactors, fed withresidues from banana production (peels, fruit, leaves, stems), codigested with sanitary sewage, for the productionof biogas hydrogen and methane, in addition to volatile fatty acids and alcohols. This bioenergetic process, withresidues in codigestion processes, will be able to associate the treatment/reduction of residues with the recoveryof value-added by-products with the total consumption of organic matter, with good gains in production, given the concept of biorefinery. (AU)