Silage production from the residues of plantain (Musa AAB Simmonds): a nutritional analysis through process simulation

Sustainable processes are required to decrease the environmental and economic impact of residues and wastes. Therefore, the agro-industrial waste upcycling, as substitutes of substrate, is of paramount relevance. In this work, the nutritional value of silage from fresh residues of plantain agroindustry was evaluated by process simulation, as an alternative of dairy cattle feed. Several databases were accessed to design the process. SuperPro Designer V10 simulator was used. Results showed that fresh plantain residues mixed with 97.14% pseudo total, 0.24% rejection banana and 1.63% of rachis are not recommended for dairy cattle consumption due to its high moisture content (>90%), fiber neutral detergent (>50%) and acid detergent fiber (>30%). Simulation techniques have shown to be a powerful tool when making decisions on investment projects that involve technologies for waste utilization in order to find the more appropriate process configuration reducing experimentation requirements.The authors thank the Ministry of Science Technology and Innovation of Colombia (Minciencias) for the financial support and the Universidad de Caldas and the Universidade do Minho for the academic and financial support to carry out this work. This study was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under the scope of the strategic funding of UIDB/04469/2020 unit and BioTecNorte operation (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000004) funded by the European Regional Development Fund under the scope of Norte2020 - Programa Operacional Regional do Norte, also, Project ColOsH 02/SAICT/2017 (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-030071) and Biomass and Bioenergy Research Infrastructure (BBRI)- LISBOA-01-0145-FEDER-022059.