Techno-economic Analysis: Antioxidant-Rich Natural Colorant Production from Dragon Fruit Peel

Abstract

Abstract In this study, the economics of the various way production of natural colorant has been evaluated, specifically related to the effect of the drying methods: spray drying and freeze-drying. It has been found in this study that, the manufacturing costs of the food colorant in the form of extract, spray-dried powder, and freeze-dried powder were USD 6.01/kg, USD 29.89/kg, and USD 56.6/kg total solid content, respectively. The economic parameters consist of NPV, DPBP, PVR, and IRR of powder production using spray drying method were USD 1,989,412.68, 4.3 years, 3.31 and 20.6%, respectively, while that of using freeze-drying were USD 2,156,866.29, 7.27 years 1.78, and 8%. It is also known that drying using spray drying shows better economic parameters than freeze-drying. The sensitivity analysis of powder production using the spray drying method shows that the selling price parameter is a parameter that has a significant effect on the economics of production activity, followed by the cost of peel and cost of labor.