Food waste valorisation and techno-economic analyses through simulation’s software: a literature review

The valorisation of food waste and losses is pursued to cope with the increasing amount of wastages produced along the whole food supply chain, in order to achieve value added products such as animal feed, molecules and compounds for the cosmetic and pharmaceutical sectors, bio-fuels and energy. Due to the variety of different losses, wastes and processes to obtain value added products, an important engineering activity is required to convert laboratories results to real plants for industrial production. Process flow simulation software, such as SuperPro Designer®, are then currently used to pursue techno-economic-analyses and feasibility studies of these kind of industrial bioprocesses. Modelling and optimization of process conditions will allow systems scale-up thus leading to a maximization of the production. Therefore, an analysis of the current applications of these types of software, will allow the reader to understand how to model these processes and evaluate which will be those already designed at an industrial level or that still remain nowadays at a lab scale. With the aim of understanding the state of the art of the software implementation, a literature review has been carried out. This work deals with then a survey about technologies for food waste valorisation into energy or value-added products, including biofertilizers, biofuels, bioplastics, and chemicals, with also a focus on biological and thermal treatments.