Diseño de una planta para la obtención de bromelina a partir de residuos de piña

Abstract

The objective of this study is to design a bromelin extraction plant from pineapple residues through membrane separation techniques. The importance of this project lies upon the fact of taking advantage of such residues and turn them into usable supplies. The final product is meat tenderizer whose base is bromelin. The main equipment to set the plant were: a scale, a conveyor belt, a washing machine, a colloidal mill, a press filter, some tangential and microfiltration equipment, an atomizer, a mixer of solids and tanks. Among the considered design criteria were: for those regarding tangential microfiltration and ultrafiltration, the volumetric retention factor, permeate flux, pressure and operation temperature, whereas the best operation temperature was taking into account for drying by means of atomization as well as the added microencapsulant and thier composition. The performance of the dry bromelin was 2% while the final performance with respect to the meat tenderizer was 7,5% and the enzymatic activity equal to 394 CDU.g-1 for the tenderizer. The Project feasibility indicators are: IRR equal to 35% and NPV equal to 1 005 488 dollars for a ten-year period, which shows that the project is viable.