A life cycle assessment comparison between centralized and decentralized biodiesel production from raw sunflower oil and waste cooking oils

Iglesias, Loreto; Laca, Adriana; Herrero, Mónica; Dı́az, Mario

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2012.07.002

Cited by 83 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Evaluation of the Eco-San systems is necessary since it has many important functions in promoting the R&Ds and applications. It can help to select the suitable Eco-San system among many different styles according to the study area and situation (Malekpour et al, 2013), to compare advantages and disadvantages of the ecological and conventional sanitation systems (Thibodeau et al, 2014), and to improve existing technology or to develop novel sanitation system (Iglesias et al, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constructing the ecological sanitation: a review on technology and methods

Fan

Wang

et al. 2016

Journal of Cleaner Production

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a b s t r a c tWastewater often contains valuable resources (e.g. organic matter and nutrients). Different from conventional sanitation approaches, the ecological sanitation (Eco-San) system is based on the closure of material flow cycles to recover resources with minimized demands on other resources. The review comprehensively summarized the main components of the Eco-San system (user interface, collection and conveyance, storage and primary treatment, and reuse/disposal), the frequently-used evaluation methods, and the framework of evaluation index system. Some typical practical cases were discussed to demonstrate the managerial implications and popularize the applications of the Eco-San system. The results show that the Eco-San systems are beneficial to resource efficiency, agricultural use of the organic matters and nutrients, and energy recovery although some shortages exist (e.g. high cost, cultural constraints, and complex operation and management). The evaluation methods can help to identify the restriction factors, contributing factors and measures to improve the efficiency of the future Eco-San system. The setting, selection and quantification are three critical steps when using the evaluation indices to complete the evaluation process. This study not only provides the methods for both developing novel Eco-San systems (combinations of the components) and improving the Eco-San systems (evaluation of the combinations) to solve the wastewater problem in rural areas. Considering the challenges or limitations in the Eco-San research, the recommendations for future research may mainly focus on the combination of different components, methods for sustainability assessment, quantification of the evaluation index, and implementation of more real Eco-San cases.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constructing the ecological sanitation: a review on technology and methods

Fan

Wang

et al. 2016

Journal of Cleaner Production

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“…Life cycle assessment (LCA) is defined as a method for assessing environmental aspects and potential impacts associated with a product (Calderón et al, 2010;Calderón et al, 2017;Iglesias et al, 2012). It has been demonstrated to be a worthwhile tool for quantifying resource use and emissions in a wide range of primary sectors such as meat production (Cederberg, 2014;Velarde et al, 2015) and dairy farms (Hospido et al, 2003) and also in industrial sectors (Tecco et al, 2016;Vázquez-Rowe et al, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental assesment of intensive egg production: A Spanish case study

Abín

Laca

et al. 2018

Journal of Cleaner Production

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Food production in intensive farming systems can be unsustainable in several ways. Although hen egg is consumed worldwide as a very valuable and cheap source of protein, there is an evident lack of studies concerning the environmental performance of egg production. The European Union produces approximately 7 million tonnes of useable eggs per annum and Spain is one of the largest egg producers. In this work, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology was applied to analyse the environmental impacts of intensive egg production using as a model a Spanish farm with 55,000 laying hens, producing about 13 million eggs per year. High quality inventory data was obtained directly from this facility. The main factors involved in egg production were included (hen feed, water, electricity, transport, cleaning elements, packaging material, replacement of exhausted laying hens, wastes and gas emissions). Inventory data were analysed using the ReCiPe Midpoint (H) V1.12 / Europe Recipe H, the ReCiPe Endpoint (H) V1.12 / Europe Recipe H methods and the Greenhouse Gas Protocol V1.01 / C02 eq (kg) by means of the LCA software package SimaPro v7. LCA results showed that, according to normalization results, natural land transformation was the most prominent category, followed by terrestrial ecotoxicity and 2 freshwater ecotoxicity. The most important source of harmful environmental impacts in all the categories under assessment was the production of the hen feed and, to a lesser extent, the purchase of new laying hens to replace the old ones. On the contrary, water consumption and the employment of chemicals for cleaning barely influenced the impact. One aspect that was noteworthy was the beneficial effect on environmental impact produced by the sale of old laying hens for meat production, especially on the urban land occupation and metal depletion categories. Additionally, the carbon footprint of egg production was calculated and a value of 2.66 kgCO2eq per dozen eggs was obtained. Environmental improvement actions should be directed mainly towards optimizing the hen feed formulation, not only from an economic perspective, but also considering the environmental aspects involved.

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“…The first characteristic deals with the distributed, centralized or two stages (combination of both previous ones) structure of the biomass supply chain. Taking into account the biomass usages, some studies have proposed models to discern between previous modes with respect to different criteria: economic for Bowling et al (2011) and environmental for Iglesias et al (2012).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%