Life cycle assessment of green biorefinery process options – Energieinstitut an der Johannes Kepler Universität Linz

Der Artikel „Life cycle assessment of green biorefinery process Options“ von DI (FH) Johannes Lindorfer und Manuela Prieler MA, MSc, wurde im wiss. Journal „Biofuels, Bioproducts & Biorefining“ publiziert.

Nachstehend finden Sie eine kurze Zusammenfassung in englischer Sprache.

In this study, the biorefinery process for generating amino acids (AA) from grass silage is analyzed ecologically. Life‐cycle assessment is conducted in accordance with ISO 14040 and ISO 14044. A kilogram of amino acid is selected as a functional unit. The system boundary is drawn around silage production and includes both agricultural and conversion processes. The technology setup is modeled based on data from a demonstration amino acid production plant that uses the silages of permanent grassland in Austria (GBR 1), and data from the experimental work conducted within the European‐funded GRASSFinery project (GBR 2) located in the Czech Republic and Germany, using life‐cycle assessment software (GaBi®).

Different scenarios are developed with different system boundaries. The baseline scenario for GBR 1 and the primary and central processing units of GBR 2 includes the green biorefinery processes without the disposal of waste flows to the biogas plant. By enlarging the system boundaries, the waste flows to the biogas plant and the energy yield from anaerobic digestion are considered as well as the transportation of intermediate products.

The global warming potential (GWP) of the whole AA production process ranges from 11.4 to 16.8 kg CO_2eq/kg AA, depending on the scenario. The GWP excludes biogenic carbon so the bound carbon in the grass silage is not included. High quality grass silage is crucial to achieve high yields of amino acids. Closed loops are a sensible step to reduce the environmental impact. © 2019 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

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