Life Cycle Assessment of electricity production in Italy from anaerobic co-digestion of pig slurry and energy crops

Lijó, Lucía; González‐García, Sara; Bacenetti, Jacopo; Fiala, Marco; Feijoo, Gumersindo; Lema, Juan M.; Moreira, María Teresa

doi:10.1016/j.renene.2014.03.005

Cited by 114 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Several studies highlighted how AD plants fed with animal slurry and manure achieve better environmental performance compared to the ones fed with the energy crops. This is possible because, being the slurries and manure a waste of other activities, no environmental load is associated with them; moreover their digestion was frequently associated with credits for the avoided emissions of their traditional management in open tanks [29,58,59,60,64,100]. Nevertheless, the environmental performance of AD plants fed with animal effluents (above all the liquid ones, such as pig slurry) strongly depends on the transport distances, that should be minimized [29,101,102].…”

Section: Feedstockmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Energy crops were recognized as one of the main environmental hotspots in particular for impact categories associated with N and P emissions into air, soil and water. When only energy crops were fed into the digesters [17,45,29,[60][61][62] and the biogas was fed into a CHP internal combustion engine (ICE), the environmental impact of the cogengerated electricity was close to the one of electricity from…”

Section: Contribution Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

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Agricultural anaerobic digestion plants: What LCA studies pointed out and what can be done to make them more environmentally sustainable

et al. 2016

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Anaerobic Digestion (AD) has been recognized as a viable solution to produce renewable energy and to reduce global warming especially when secondary feedstock and/or wastes are used. Several LCA studies analysed the environmental performances of biogas production systems. The results of this review highlight that the goal, scope, life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methodology, feedstocks and geographical regions covered by the studies vary widely. Most studies are based in Europe, several in China and few in South and North America and in Africa. To better highlight how the choices on the feeding mix, the digestate storage, the surplus heat valorisation as well as the plant size can affect the environmental performances of agricultural AD plants four plants have been analyzed in this study. The results suggest that the energy crops production and the operation of anaerobic digesters, including digestate emission from open tanks, are the main contributors to the impacts from biogas electricity. This entails that it is environmentally better to have smaller plants using slurry and waste rather than bigger plants fed with energy crops. Recovering heat waste as well as covering of digestate tank would improve significantly the environmental sustainability of biogas electricity, and particularly the global warming category. We are pleased to enclose the revised version of our original manuscript of our paper entitled "Agricultural anaerobic digestion plants: What LCA studies pointed out and what can be done to make them more environmentally sustainable" which can hopefully be published in Applied Energy.Many thanks to the reviewers for their comments; they helped us to improve the manuscript.We hope that the manuscript in the revised form is appropriate for publication in Applied Energy.On behalf of all the Authors, as corresponding Author, yours sincerely, Cover Letter Title: Agricultural anaerobic digestion plants: What LCA studies pointed out and what can be done to make them more sustainable Dear Editor, we would like to thank you for the reviewers' comments. We are grateful to all the reviewers for devoting their time to review our manuscript. As you can see, we have taken most of them into consideration to modify the paper. We hope that the paper in this current revised version can be accepted for publication. Below, we enclose an explanation of how we have addressed the questions raised. Reviewer #1The manuscript is working on the review of the environmental impacts of biogas production. It includes good results, an interesting methodology, and related to the scope of this Journal. I suggest to accept it after some minor revisions. Thank you for your positive comments and for useful suggestions.The authors should write about the difference between their study and the following research: * Hijazi, O., Munro, S., Zerhusen, B. and Effenberger, M., 2016. Review of life cycle assessment for biogas production in Europe. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 54, 1291-300. Done, we specified in the int...

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Section: Feedstockmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Contribution Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Agricultural anaerobic digestion plants: What LCA studies pointed out and what can be done to make them more environmentally sustainable

et al. 2016

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“…They found also that trade-offs among the different environmental impacts exist and an analysis of impact categories other than global warming is needed to fully grasp the environmental benefits or impacts of biogas production. The relevance of biogas production on impact categories related to atmospheric pollution (PM (Particulate Matter) emissions, photochemical ozone, acidification and eutrophication) is widely reported in literature [13][14][15][16][17][18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmentally Sustainable Biogas? The Key Role of Manure Co-Digestion with Energy Crops

et al. 2015

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Abstract:We analysed the environmental impacts of three biogas systems based on dairy manure, sorghum and maize. The geographical scope of the analysis is the Po valley, in Italy. The anaerobic digestion of manure guarantees high GHG (Green House Gases) savings thanks to the avoided emissions from the traditional storage and management of raw manure as organic fertiliser. GHG emissions for maize and sorghum-based systems, on the other hand, are similar to those of the Italian electricity mix. In crop-based systems, the plants with open-tank storage of digestate emit 50% more GHG than those with gas-tight tanks. In all the environmental impact categories analysed (acidification, particulate matter emissions, and eutrophication), energy crops based systems have much higher impacts than the Italian electricity mix. Maize-based systems cause higher impacts than sorghum, due to more intensive cultivation. Manure-based pathways have always lower impacts than the energy crops based pathways, however, all biogas systems cause much higher impacts than the current Italian electricity mix. We conclude that manure digestion OPEN ACCESSEnergies 2015, 8 5235 is the most efficient way to reduce GHG emissions; although there are trade-offs with other local environmental impacts. Biogas production from crops; although not providing environmental benefits per se; may be regarded as an option to facilitate the deployment of manure digestion.

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“…También se pueden considerar biocombustibles otros compuestos orgánicos producidos por los microorganismos como acetona, alcoholes, alcanos, isoprenoides, etc., y por supuesto el biogas, que es una mezcla gaseosa de metano con otros compuestos. El biogas lo generan los microorganismos mediante digestión anaeró-bica de materia orgánica como residuos ganaderos o productos agrícolas y se puede emplear para producir electricidad (Lijó et al, 2014). Tanto los microorganismos como los compuestos químicos y los medios técnicos para producir estos se conocen desde hace tiempo, quedando como un reto de la biotecnología ambiental explotar la biodiversidad microbiana y sus nuevos productos (Timmis et al, 2014).…”

Section: El Ciclo Del Carbonounclassified

Acerca de la biotecnología ambiental

Blasco¹,

Rodríguez²

2014

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RESUMEN: La Biotecnología ambiental trata de corregir los desequilibrios causados en el medio ambiente por actividades industriales que alteran los ecosistemas naturales mediante contaminación química o biológica y que también afectan a los grandes ciclos biogeoquímicos en la biosfera, mayoritariamente catalizados por seres vivos, entre los que los microrganismos juegan un papel esencial. Las desviaciones en los balances de compuestos carbonados, nitrogenados y azufrados atmosféricos pueden causar fenómenos de gran complejidad como el calentamiento global, la destrucción de la capa de ozono, la contaminación ambiental o la lluvia ácida. Por otra parte, las interacciones de los microorganismos entre sí y con el medio, desconocidas en su mayor parte, tiene importantes repercusiones en la generación y persistencia de especies químicas que, depositadas en las cadenas tróficas, son altamente tóxicas para los organismos vivos. Para atajar estos problemas es necesario avanzar en el conocimiento a nivel molecular de la ecología microbiana y del funcionamiento de los ciclos biogeoquímicos, aunque no es menos necesario desarrollar tecnologías para la eliminación de contaminantes industriales in situ y ex situ, evitar su producción y utilización incontroladas así como corregir las actuaciones desequilibrantes, actuales o futuras, de la biogeoquímica planetaria.

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Life Cycle Assessment of electricity production in Italy from anaerobic co-digestion of pig slurry and energy crops

Cited by 114 publications

References 27 publications

Agricultural anaerobic digestion plants: What LCA studies pointed out and what can be done to make them more environmentally sustainable

Agricultural anaerobic digestion plants: What LCA studies pointed out and what can be done to make them more environmentally sustainable

Environmentally Sustainable Biogas? The Key Role of Manure Co-Digestion with Energy Crops

Acerca de la biotecnología ambiental

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