Quantifying the Sustainability of Oil Production from Native Avocado in Northern Colombia via SWROIM Approach

The Colombian Caribbean region has favorable conditions for Creole-Antillean avocado production, providing an agro-industrial feedstock with potential for value-added oil processing. This study evaluates the process-level sustainability of avocado oil production using the Sustainability Weighted Return on Investment (SWROIM) methodology, which integrates economic, environmental, exergetic, technical, and inherent-safety performance within a single decision-support metric. The process was modeled in Aspen Plus® and included mechanical preparation, pulp drying, hexane extraction, solvent recovery, and product cooling. The evaluated configuration exhibited a potential environmental impact of 0.50 PEI/kg, an overall exergy efficiency of 31%, a Total Inherent Safety Index of 16, and a Total Cost of Energy of 1056.65 USD/day, revealing performance gaps relative to the selected reference conditions, particularly in the environmental and thermodynamic dimensions. The economic assessment yielded a total capital investment of USD 6.43 million, an annual profit after taxes of USD 3.40 million, and an ROI of 52.84%. Integration of the non-economic indicators resulted in a base-case SWROIM of 147.83%. Weighting-factor sensitivity produced SWROIM values between 101.47% and 118.50% when individual sustainability dimensions were prioritized, with the environmental-priority scenario yielding the lowest value. Target-value sensitivity further showed SWROIM values ranging from 129.76% to 168.22% under combined variations in benchmark stringency. These results identify environmental-impact reduction, energy integration, and solvent management as the main priorities for process improvement while demonstrating the usefulness of SWROIM for multidimensional assessment at the conceptual design stage.