Techno-economic and environmental assessment of essential oil extraction from Citronella (Cymbopogon winteriana) and Lemongrass (Cymbopogon citrus): A Colombian case to evaluate different extraction technologies

• Modeling and simulation of essential oil extraction from Citronella and Lemongrass.
• Analysis of supercritical fluid, solvent, and water distillation extraction.
• Influence of energy integration on total energy consumption.
• Techno-economic and environmental assessment to evaluate the most promising configuration.

In this study a techno-economic and environmental assessment of essential oil extraction from Citronella and Lemongrass is presented for the Colombian case. Extraction by water distillation was used to evaluate experimental yields (Lemongrass: 7.50 kg/t, Citronella: 8.27 kg/t). Samples obtained from the experimental procedure were analyzed to determine the essential oil composition and use this information as starting point in the technical analysis. After this, three extraction technologies (i.e. supercritical fluid, solvent, and water distillation) were assessed from the techno-economic and environmental points of view. All technologies were evaluated using Aspen Plus, Aspen Process Economic Analyzer, and WAR GUI, carrying out simulation, economic evaluation, and environmental assessment, respectively. Besides, to analyze the effect of energy consumption in each technology, two scenarios were proposed considering different levels integration (i.e. without integration, fully integrated). The lowest production cost was obtained for extraction by water distillation with full energy integration for both Citronella and Lemongrass (Citronella: 6.48 USD/kg, Lemongrass: 7.50 USD/kg). Additionally, the lowest potential environmental impact (Citronella: 0.017 PEI/kg, Lemongrass: 0.016 PEI/kg) and lowest carbon footprint (Citronella: 0.79 kg CO2-e/kg oil, Lemongrass: 0.73 kg CO2-e/kg oil) were obtained for extraction by water distillation with full energy integration.