Improving the Sustainability of Farming Practices through the Use of a Symbiotic Approach for Anaerobic Digestion and Digestate Processing

Abstract

Abstract:The dairy sector in the Netherlands aims for a 30% increase in efficiency and 30% carbon dioxide emission reduction compared to the reference year of 1990, and a 20% share of renewable energy, all by the year 2020. Anaerobic Digestion (AD) can play a substantial role in achieving these aims. However, results from this study indicate that the AD system is not fully optimized in combination with farming practices regarding sustainability. Therefore, the Industrial Symbiosis concept, combined with energy and environmental system analysis, Life Cycle Analysis and modeling is used to optimize a farm-scale AD system on four indicators of sustainability (i.e., energy efficiency, carbon footprint, environmental impacts and costs). Implemented in a theoretical case, where a cooperation of farms share biomass feedstocks, a symbiotic AD system can significantly lower external energy consumption by 72 to 92%, carbon footprint by 71 to 91%, environmental impacts by 68 to 89%, and yearly expenditures by 56 to 66% compared to a reference cooperation. The largest reductions and economic gains can be achieved when a surplus of manure is available for upgrading into organic fertilizer to replace fossil fertilizers. Applying the aforementioned symbiotic concept to the Dutch farming sector can help to achieve the stated goals indicated by the Dutch agricultural sector for the year 2020.

Energy-based industrial symbiosis: a literature review for circular energy transition

“…Also this issue could be investigated via LCA analysis. In fact, in this literature analysis, only few out of 96 articles analyzed (e.g., Eckelman and Chertow 2013;Geng et al 2010;Mattila et al 2012;Pakarinen et al 2010;Pierie et al 2017;Sokka et al 2011) adopt LCA to energy-based IS, while the rest of them, having different focuses, skip the use of the LCA, which is critically important to measure the holistic contribution of IS rather than the core contribution. From the economic perspective, the profitability of energy-based IS synergies should be investigated more in depth, taking into account the investment costs and economic accounting of environmental cost reductions, which might be a base for governments to decide for subsidy distribution among stakeholders.…”

“…Zabaniotou et al (2015) and Ruggieri et al (2016) discuss how to produce energy from wastes generated by olive oil production. Pierie et al (2017) and Yazan et al (2018) analyze the electric energy production chain from animal manure in the Netherlands, where different manure producers can cooperate with one or more energy producers. In particular, Pierie et al (2017) assess the possible economic and environmental benefits for the involved companies and the collectivity, respectively.…”

The impact of biogas production on the organic carbon input to the soil of Dutch dairy farms: A substance flow analysis

“…Biogas from dairy manure is proposed as a part of the Dutch renewable energy transition (Achinas et al., 2019; EZK, 2019; Gebrezgabher et al., 2012; Groen Gas Forum, 2014; NZO, 2018; Pierie et al., 2017). Biogas, via anaerobic digestion process, is a recycling product of manure carbon which originates from recently grown feeding crop in a short carbon cycle.…”