Seaweed as innovative feedstock for energy and feed – Evaluating the impacts through a Life Cycle Assessment

Seghetta, Michele; Romeo, Daina; D’Este, Martina; Alvarado-Morales, Merlin; Angelidaki, Irini; Bastianoni, Simone; Thomsen, Marianne

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.02.022

Cited by 85 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…This is also the case for chemical separation or ensiling of the Laminaria sp. (van Hal, Huijgen, & López-Contreras, 2014;Herrmann et al, 2015;Hou, From, Angelidaki, Huijgen, & Bjerre, 2017;Seghetta et al, 2017;Stévant, Rebours, & Chapman, 2017).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental hotspots of lactic acid production systems

et al. 2019

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Using selected bio‐based feedstocks as alternative to fossil resources for producing biochemicals and derived materials is increasingly considered an important goal of a viable bioeconomy worldwide. However, to ensure that using bio‐based feedstocks is aligned with the global sustainability agenda, impacts along the entire life cycle of biochemical production systems need to be evaluated. This will help to identify those processes and technologies, which should be targeted for optimizing overall environmental sustainability performance. To address this need, we quantify environmental impacts of biochemical production using distinct bio‐based feedstocks, and discuss the potential for reducing impact hotspots via process optimization. Lactic acid (LA) was used as an example biochemical derived from corn, corn stover, and macroalgae (Laminaria sp.) as feedstocks of different technological maturity. We used environmental life cycle assessment (LCA), a standardized methodology, considering the full life cycle of the analyzed biochemical production systems and a broad range of environmental impact indicators. Across production systems, feedstock production and biorefinery processes dominate life cycle impact profiles, with choice in energy mix and biomass processing as main influencing aspects. Results show that uncertainty decreases with increasing technological maturity. When using Laminaria sp. (least mature among selected feedstocks), impacts are mainly driven by energy utilities (up to 86%) due to biomass drying. This suggests to focus on optimizing or avoiding this process for significantly increasing environmental sustainability of Laminaria sp.‐based LA production. Our results demonstrate that applying LCA is useful for identifying environmental impact hotspots at an earlier stage of technological development across biochemical production systems. With that, our approach contributes to improving the environmental sustainability of future biochemical production as part of moving toward a viable bioeconomy worldwide.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental hotspots of lactic acid production systems

et al. 2019

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“…) or seaweed‐based feed (Seghetta et al . ) – see Figure for comparative results. Using seafood by‐products to replace FMFO shows lower environmental impacts in climate change, energy use and NPPU (Papatryphon et al .…”

Section: Comparative Performances Of Aquaculture Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life cycle assessments of aquaculture systems: a critical review of reported findings with recommendations for policy and system development

Bohnes

Hauschild

Schlundt

2018

Reviews in Aquaculture

111

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The aquaculture sector is anticipated to be a keystone in food production systems in the coming decades. However, it is associated with potentially important environmental damages caused by its contribution to eutrophication or climate change, for example. To comprehensively quantify those impacts, life cycle assessment (LCA) studies have been conducted on several seafood farming systems for the past 15 years. But, what major findings and common trends can we draw from this pool of studies? What can we learn to provide recommendations to decision and policymakers in the aquaculture sector? To address these questions, we performed a critical review of 65 LCA studies of aquaculture systems from the open literature. We conducted quantitative analyses to explore which impacts can be identified as dominating and to compare different types of aquaculture systems. Our results evidenced that the feed production is a key driver for climate change, acidification, cumulative energy use and net primary production use, while the farming process is a key driver for eutrophication. We also found that different aquaculture systems and technology components may exert considerably different environmental impacts. Based on identified patterns and comparisons, we therefore provided specific recommendations to aquaculture stakeholders for future policy and system development. Overall, the analysis of existing studies demonstrates that important insights can be gained by applying LCA to aquaculture systems, and, to move towards an environmentally sustainable aquaculture sector, we recommend its systematic use in the design of new aquaculture systems or policies, and/or in the evaluation and optimization of existing ones.

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“…Of these nine papers, three actually addressed biogas production and resource efficiency. One of these, Seghetta et al [8], examines alternative treatment methods for seaweed from an environmental and energy perspective. However, the study does not include an economic assessment.…”

Section: Previous Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Systems Analysis of Biogas Production—Part I Research Design

2019

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Striving towards a resource efficient society requires an adjustment of energy systems towards renewable options. It is also of high importance to make use of products and materials to a higher degree. Biogas production has the potential to recover nutrients and energy from organic by-products, as well as to substitute fossil fuels in the energy system. Resource efficiency relates to the economic, energy and environmental performance of the system studied. A comprehensive research design for assessment of the resource efficiency of biogas production systems is described in this paper. The research design includes the following parts: identification of cases, defining scenarios, system development, evaluation perspectives and systems analysis. The analysis is performed from three perspectives; economy, energy and environment.

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Seaweed as innovative feedstock for energy and feed – Evaluating the impacts through a Life Cycle Assessment

Cited by 85 publications

References 36 publications

Environmental hotspots of lactic acid production systems

Environmental hotspots of lactic acid production systems

Life cycle assessments of aquaculture systems: a critical review of reported findings with recommendations for policy and system development

Systems Analysis of Biogas Production—Part I Research Design

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