scholarly journals Life Cycle Environmental Assessment of Energy Valorization of the Residual Agro-Food Industry

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (17) ◽  
pp. 5491
Author(s):  
Maria Anna Cusenza ◽  
Maurizio Cellura ◽  
Francesco Guarino ◽  
Sonia Longo
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Food Industry ◽  
Combustion Process ◽  
Electricity Consumption ◽  
Energy System ◽  
Anaerobic Digester ◽  
Cycle Phase ◽  
Life Cycle Assessment Methodology ◽  
The Impact

This study assesses the potential environmental impacts related to the energy valorization of agro-food industry waste thought the Life Cycle Assessment methodology (ISO 14040). The system examined consists of a real anaerobic digester coupled with a combined anaerobic digester and heat and power plant (AD-CHP) operating in Sicily. The analysis accounts for all the impacts occurring from the delivery of the biomass to the AD-CHP plant up to the electricity generation in the CHP. The main outcomes of the study include the eco-profile of the energy system providing electricity and the assessment of the contribution of each life cycle phase aimed at identifying the potential improvement area. The obtained results highlight that the direct emissions associated with the biogas combustion process in the CHP account for 66% of the impact on climate change, and feedstock transport contributes 64% to the impact on mineral, fossil fuels, and renewable depletion. The contribution to the impacts caused by the electricity consumption is relevant in many of the environmental categories examined. It ranges from a minimum of about 22% for climate change up to 82% for freshwater ecotoxicity. Then actions aimed at reducing electricity consumption can significantly improve the environmental performances of the energy system examined.

Life Cycle Assessment of opencast lignite mining

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lukasz Lelek ◽  
Joanna Kulczycka
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Production Efficiency ◽  
Underground Mining ◽  
Hot Spot ◽  
Electricity Consumption ◽  
Calorific Value ◽  
High Sensitivity ◽  
Cycle Phase ◽  
Mining Operations ◽  
Lignite Mining

Abstract The life cycle phase of fossil fuel extraction is mainly considered in the LCA when evaluating the energy production processes. It is then only one of many unit processes, which contribute to the blurring of mining-relevant results. There are few items in the literature focusing exclusively on the lignite mining phase and analysing the specific mining conditions and associated environmental impacts. The article focuses on the LCA of lignite mining pro-cesses on the basis of data coming from a Polish mine. The technology for opencast lignite mining is noted for its high production efficiency, high level of recovery and lower risk as regards the safety of workers when compared with underground mining systems. However, the need to remove large amounts of overburden to uncover the deposit contributes to a much greater degradation of the landscape. Analysing the results obtained, several key (hot spot) elements of the lignite mining operations were distinguished for modelling the environmental impact, i.e.: calorific value, the amount of electricity consumption, the manner in which waste and overburden are managed. As a result there is a high sensitivity of the final indicator to changes in these impacts.

scholarly journals Life Cycle Assessment of Maize-Germ Oil Production and The Use of Bioenergy to Mitigate Environmental Impacts: A Gate-To-Gate Case Study

Resources ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mattias Gaglio ◽  
Elena Tamburini ◽  
Francesco Lucchesi ◽  
Vassilis Aschonitis ◽  
Anna Atti ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Energy Demand ◽  
Food Industry ◽  
Renewable Energy Sources ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
Impact Categories ◽  
Industrial Processing ◽  
The Impact

The need to reduce the environmental impacts of the food industry is increasing together with the dramatic increment of global food demand. Circulation strategies such as the exploitation of self-produced renewable energy sources can improve ecological performances of industrial processes. However, evidence is needed to demonstrate and characterize such environmental benefits. This study assessed the environmental performances of industrial processing of maize edible oil, whose energy provision is guaranteed by residues biomasses. A gate-to-gate Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach was applied for a large-size factory of Northern Italy to describe: (i) the environmental impacts related to industrial processing and (ii) the contribution of residue-based bioenergy to their mitigation, through the comparison with a reference system based on conventional energy. The results showed that oil refinement is the most impacting phase for almost all the considered impact categories. The use of residue-based bioenergy was found to drastically reduce the emissions for all the impact categories. Moreover, Cumulative Energy Demand analysis revealed that the use of biomass residues increased energy efficiency through a reduction of the total energy demand of the industrial process. The study demonstrates that the exploitation of residue-based bioenergy can be a sustainable solution to improve environmental performances of the food industry, while supporting circular economy.

scholarly journals The Climate Action Simulation

2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 114-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliette N. Rooney-Varga ◽  
Florian Kapmeier ◽  
John D. Sterman ◽  
Andrew P. Jones ◽  
Michele Putko ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Focus Group ◽  
Energy Systems ◽  
Role Playing ◽  
Energy System ◽  
Initial Evaluation ◽  
Emotional Engagement ◽  
Action Simulation ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
The Impact

Background. We describe and provide an initial evaluation of the Climate Action Simulation, a simulation-based role-playing game that enables participants to learn for themselves about the response of the climate-energy system to potential policies and actions. Participants gain an understanding of the scale and urgency of climate action, the impact of different policies and actions, and the dynamics and interactions of different policy choices. Intervention. The Climate Action Simulation combines an interactive computer model, En-ROADS, with a role-play in which participants make decisions about energy and climate policy. They learn about the dynamics of the climate and energy systems as they discover how En-ROADS responds to their own climate-energy decisions. Methods. We evaluated learning outcomes from the Climate Action Simulation using pre- and post-simulation surveys as well as a focus group. Results. Analysis of survey results showed that the Climate Action Simulation increases participants’ knowledge about the scale of emissions reductions and policies and actions needed to address climate change. Their personal and emotional engagement with climate change also grew. Focus group participants were overwhelmingly positive about the Climate Action Simulation, saying it left them feeling empowered to make a positive difference in addressing the climate challenge. Discussion and Conclusions. Initial evaluation results indicate that the Climate Action Simulation offers an engaging experience that delivers gains in knowledge about the climate and energy systems, while also opening affective and social learning pathways.

scholarly journals Environmental and social issues on energy policy in indonesia

2018 ◽  
Vol 73 ◽  
pp. 02002
Author(s):  
Sudharto Prawata Hadi ◽  
Bulan Prabawani ◽  
Hartuti Purnaweni
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Mineral Resource ◽  
Renewable Energy ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Energy System ◽  
Fossil Energy ◽  
Crucial Problem ◽  
New Energy ◽  
The Impact

One crucial problem faced by Indonesia is the dependence on fossil energy reaching to 93,3%, while the share of renewable energy is only 7,7%. This causes two implications. Firstly, Indonesia is at the situation of insecurity energy due to the limitation of the availability of fossil energy. Since 2004, Indonesia is net importer oil country. Secondly, the use of fossil energy creates CO2, a component of green house gases stimulating global warming and climate change. One strategy to deal with this problem is by implementing new energy system consisting of developing renewable energy and energy efficiency. This paper observes the impact of the use of fossil energy, the measures taken to deal with these problems and the issues of implementing the measures. This research relies on secondary data available at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resource, Ministry of Environment and Forestry specifically at by Proper Secretariat, and other relevant sources.

Constraining the model representation of the aerosol life cycle in relation to sources and sinks.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Kim ◽  
Daniel Partridge ◽  
James Haywood
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Global Climate Model ◽  
Evaluation Framework ◽  
Microphysical Properties ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Source And Sink

<p>Global climate model (GCM) ensembles still produce a significant spread of estimates for the future of climate change which hinders our ability to influence policymakers. The range of these estimates can only partly be explained by structural differences and varying choice of parameterisation schemes between GCMs. GCM representation of cloud and aerosol processes, more specifically aerosol microphysical properties, remain a key source of uncertainty contributing to the wide spread of climate change estimates. The radiative effect of aerosol is directly linked to the microphysical properties and these are in turn controlled by aerosol source and sink processes during transport as well as meteorological conditions.</p><p>A Lagrangian, trajectory-based GCM evaluation framework, using spatially and temporally collocated aerosol diagnostics, has been applied to over a dozen GCMs via the AeroCom initiative. This framework is designed to isolate the source and sink processes that occur during the aerosol life cycle in order to improve the understanding of the impact of these processes on the simulated aerosol burden. Measurement station observations linked to reanalysis trajectories are then used to evaluate each GCM with respect to a quasi-observational standard to assess GCM skill. The AeroCom trajectory experiment specifies strict guidelines for modelling groups; all simulations have wind fields nudged to ERA-Interim reanalysis and all simulations use emissions from the same inventories. This ensures that the discrepancies between GCM parameterisations are emphasised and differences due to large scale transport patterns, emissions and other external factors are minimised.</p><p>Preliminary results from the AeroCom trajectory experiment will be presented and discussed, some of which are summarised now. A comparison of GCM aerosol particle number size distributions against observations made by measurement stations in different environments will be shown, highlighting the difficulties that GCMs have at reproducing observed aerosol concentrations across all size ranges in pristine environments. The impact of precipitation during transport on aerosol microphysical properties in each GCM will be shown and the implications this has on resulting aerosol forcing estimates will be discussed. Results demonstrating the trajectory collocation framework will highlight its ability to give more accurate estimates of the key aerosol sources in GCMs and the importance of these sources in influencing modelled aerosol-cloud effects. In summary, it will be shown that this analysis approach enables us to better understand the drivers behind inter-model and model-observation discrepancies.</p>

scholarly journals North–south polarization of European electricity consumption under future warming

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (38) ◽  
pp. E7910-E7918 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonie Wenz ◽  
Anders Levermann ◽  
Maximilian Auffhammer
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Dose Response ◽  
Electricity Market ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Peak Load ◽  
Electricity Consumption ◽  
Total Consumption ◽  
Electric Sector ◽  
Future Warming ◽  
The Impact

There is growing empirical evidence that anthropogenic climate change will substantially affect the electric sector. Impacts will stem both from the supply side—through the mitigation of greenhouse gases—and from the demand side—through adaptive responses to a changing environment. Here we provide evidence of a polarization of both peak load and overall electricity consumption under future warming for the world’s third-largest electricity market—the 35 countries of Europe. We statistically estimate country-level dose–response functions between daily peak/total electricity load and ambient temperature for the period 2006–2012. After removing the impact of nontemperature confounders and normalizing the residual load data for each country, we estimate a common dose–response function, which we use to compute national electricity loads for temperatures that lie outside each country’s currently observed temperature range. To this end, we impose end-of-century climate on today’s European economies following three different greenhouse-gas concentration trajectories, ranging from ambitious climate-change mitigation—in line with the Paris agreement—to unabated climate change. We find significant increases in average daily peak load and overall electricity consumption in southern and western Europe (∼3 to ∼7% for Portugal and Spain) and significant decreases in northern Europe (∼−6 to ∼−2% for Sweden and Norway). While the projected effect on European total consumption is nearly zero, the significant polarization and seasonal shifts in peak demand and consumption have important ramifications for the location of costly peak-generating capacity, transmission infrastructure, and the design of energy-efficiency policy and storage capacity.

scholarly journals A New Framework to Evaluate Urban Design Using Urban Microclimatic Modelling in Future Climatic Conditions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dasaraden Mauree ◽  
Silvia Coccolo ◽  
Dasun Perera ◽  
Vahid Nik ◽  
Jean-Louis Scartezzini ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Energy System ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Local Climate ◽  
Heating And Cooling ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Impact

Building more energy efficient and sustainable urban areas that will both mitigate the effect of climate change and adapt for the future climate, requires the development new tools and methods that can help urban planners, architect and communities achieve this goal. In the current study, we designed a workflow that links different methodologies developed separately, to derive the energy consumption of a university school campus for the future. Three different scenarios for typical future years (2039, 2069, 2099) were run as well as a renovation scenario (Minergie-P). We analyse the impact of climate change on the heating and cooling demand of the buildings and determined the relevance of the accounting of the local climate in this particular context. The results from the simulations showed that in the future there will a constant decrease in the heating demand while for the cooling demand there will be a significant increase. It was further demonstrated that when the local climate was taken into account there was an even higher rise in the cooling demand but also that the proposed renovations were not sufficient to design resilient buildings. We then discuss the implication of this work on the simulation of building energy consumption at the neighbourhood scale and the impact of future local climate on energy system design. We finally give a few perspective regarding improved urban design and possible pathways for the future urban areas.

scholarly journals Biogas to Fuel Cell State of The Art: A Review

2021 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-104
Author(s):  
Shafini Mohd Shafie ◽  
A Harits Nu'man ◽  
Nik Nurul Anis Nik Yusuf
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Fuel Cells ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Fuel Cell ◽  
Energy Supply ◽  
Biogas Production ◽  
Electricity Consumption ◽  
Cell System ◽  
Energy Resources ◽  
The Impact

Due to the emerging development in the energy industry, the demand for electricity consumption has sharply increased for each country. Therefore, a new recovery of energy resources is needed in consequence of the decreasing dependency on conventional energy resources, while sustaining energy security in the aspect of energy supply and climate change issues. The fuel cell is one of the most potential resources to be explored in order to overcome the constraints of the current energy generation. The aim of this paper is to discuss the entire cycle of the fuel cell system. It is starting from biogas production up to the recent studies related to life cycle assessment on fuel cell studies. Most of the researchers focused on the technical part of fuel cells; however, a comprehensive environmental assessment is essential to fully recognize the impact of fuel cells. Furthermore, this conceptual paper provided an idea on understanding the concept of fuel cell and referred to recently published articles related to life cycle assessment. Hopefully, this study can provide the guideline in determining the future energy for this country, in order to be less dependent on the current resources of energy supply.

scholarly journals Life Cycle Assessment on Different Synthetic Routes of ZIF-8 Nanomaterials

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (16) ◽  
pp. 4998
Author(s):  
Vasileios Ntouros ◽  
Ioannis Kousis ◽  
Dimitra Papadaki ◽  
Anna Laura Pisello ◽  
Margarita Niki Assimakopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Renewable Energy Sources ◽  
Electricity Consumption ◽  
Research Activity ◽  
Synthetic Routes ◽  
The Impact

In the last twenty years, research activity around the environmental applications of metal–organic frameworks has bloomed due to their CO2 capture ability, tunable properties, porosity, and well-defined crystalline structure. Thus, hundreds of MOFs have been developed. However, the impact of their production on the environment has not been investigated as thoroughly as their potential applications. In this work, the environmental performance of various synthetic routes of MOF nanoparticles, in particular ZIF-8, is assessed through a life cycle assessment. For this purpose, five representative synthesis routes were considered, and synthesis data were obtained based on available literature. The synthesis included different solvents (de-ionized water, methanol, dimethylformamide) as well as different synthetic steps (i.e., hours of drying, stirring, precursor). The findings revealed that the main environmental weak points identified during production were: (a) the use of dimethylformamide (DMF) and methanol (MeOH) as substances impacting environmental sustainability, which accounted for more than 85% of the overall environmental impacts in those synthetic routes where they were utilized as solvents and as cleaning agents at the same time; (b) the electricity consumption, especially due to the Greek energy mix which is fossil-fuel dependent, and accounted for up to 13% of the overall environmental impacts in some synthetic routes. Nonetheless, for the optimization of the impacts provided by the energy use, suggestions are made based on the use of alternative, cleaner renewable energy sources, which (for the case of wind energy) will decrease the impacts by up to 2%.

Analysis of Calculation Methods for Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions for Road Sector

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Viktoras Vorobjovas ◽  
Algirdas Motiejunas ◽  
Tomas Ratkevicius ◽  
Alvydas Zagorskis ◽  
Vaidotas Danila
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Carbon Footprint ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
Road Construction ◽  
Evaluation Methods ◽  
The Road ◽  
Construction Methods ◽  
The Impact

Climate change is one of the main nowadays problem in the world. The politics and strategies for climate change and tools for reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and green technologies are created and implemented. Mainly it is focused on energy, transport and construction sectors, which are related and plays a significant role in the roads life cycle. Most of the carbon footprint emissions are generated by transport. The remaining emissions are generated during the road life cycle. Therefore, European and other countries use methods to calculate GHG emissions and evaluate the impact of road construction methods and technologies on the environment. Software tools for calculation GHG emissions are complicated, and it is not entirely clear what GHG emission amounts generate during different stages of road life cycle. Thus, the precision of the obtained results are often dependent on the sources and quantities of data, assumptions, and hypothesis. The use of more accurate and efficient calculation-evaluation methods could let to determine in which stages of road life cycle the largest carbon footprint emissions are generated, what advanced road construction methods and technologies could be used. Also, the road service life could be extended, the consumption of raw materials, repair, and maintenance costs could be reduced. Therefore the time-savings could be improved, and the impact on the environment could be reduced using these GHG calculation-evaluation methods.

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