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Se hizo la activación física de carbones provenientes de El Cerrejón con el fin de evaluar distintas condiciones de activación para obtener carbones activados con distintas propiedades de interés. Estos se caracterizaron utilizando los índices de yodo y de azul de metileno (ASTM D 4607, NTC 4467). Se encontró que el carbón activado obtenido por activación física presentaba una capacidad de adsorción de colorantes de hasta un 70% y, por ende, podía aplicarse en el tratamiento de aguas industriales contaminadas con colorantes utilizados en la industria textil. Palabras clave: carbón activado, activación física, remediación, colorantes industriales. Activated carbon production by physical methods using El Cerrejón coal and its application to waste water treatment from textile industries

The Colombian industrial sector is moving toward alternative forms of treatment of industrial waste, considering that the waste can be a source of raw material in the production chain. Thus, aiming at the decrease in mineral fertilizer use, and maintaining or even raising the crop yield, the sugarcane industry has recently advanced in the composting of the industrial waste and application in the field, both of them being potentially sustainable practices. This manuscript reports the economic benefits and the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions related to the sugarcane production system in Colombia that has been simulated in this study to evaluate the beneficial effects of reusing industrial waste from ethanol production. This study was performed using the Virtual Sugarcane Biorefinery (VSB) modeling software for the simulation of agricultural and industrial parameters on integrated alternatives for the sugarcane industry. Colombian sugarcane sector was modeled using three scenarios representing agricultural systems that do not use composted industrial waste vs a paired scenario for each condition where composted waste is utilized. Regarding compost and vinasse use as fertilizer and soil conditioner, GHG emissions from the biogenic origin are not included as a reported item in the matrix of GHG emissions of the sugarcane sector. Inputs for the economic and environmental assessment models are based on actual operational data from two mill sites, one located in the traditional sugarcane production region of Cauca River Valley and the other one, on the agricultural expansion region of Llanos Orientales. Here, we have found that the reuse of composted industrial waste is beneficial and provides an economic cost savings of 2–6% per year. However, it also results in an annual increase of 10–20% in the GHG emissions.

Energy generation is key to any country's development, and the threats to energy supply have led the Colombian government to establish national policies that stimulate energy generation projects. In response, this manuscript reports the economic impact and the GHG emission that have been simulated in this study to evaluate the co-firing of the coalbagasse mixture in the cogeneration systems of the ethanol industry in the Cauca River Valley in Colombia as an opportunity to increase the economic benefits due to the increase of electricity sell to the national grid in the strong dry seasons. This study was carried out using the Virtual Sugarcane Biorefinery (VSB) modeling software employed for the simulation of agricultural and industrial parameters in integrated alternatives for the sugarcane industry, which was adjusted to the Colombian conditions to allow simulating the current electricity production in the sugarcane mills in the assessed region. The economic assessment of the co-firing process in the cogeneration system demonstrates that this industrial process represents an opportunity to increase the economic benefits by about 26%. However, the coal combustion in the boiler generates about 54% of the total GHG emissions for the consumption of coal, whereas the burning of bagasse corresponds to only 5%.