Abstract
A three-year experiment was carried out in Central Greece to assess the use of different tillage practices (Conventional, Reduced, and No tillage) for seedbed preparation, in a double cropping per year rotation of irrigated and rainfed energy crops for biomass production for first- and second-generation biofuel production. A life cycle assessment (LCA) study was performed for the first year of crop rotation to evaluate the environmental impact of using different tillage practices, identifying the processes with greater influence on the overall environmental burden (hotspots) and demonstrating the potential environmental benefits from the land management change. LCA results revealed that fertilizer application and diesel fuel consumption, as well as their production stages, were the hot-spot processes for each treatment. In the present study, different tillage treatments compared using mass- and area-based functional unit (FU), revealing that reduced tillage, using strip tillage for spring crop and disc harrow for winter crops, and no tillage treatment had the best environmental performance, respectively. Comparison between the prevailing in the area monoculture cotton crop with the proposed double energy crop rotation adopting conservation tillage practices, using mass and energy value FU, showed that cotton crop had higher environmental impact.
Highlights
The potential environmental benefits of bioenergy derived from renewable biomass sources have been the subject of research the last years
The purpose of the endpoint calculations was to determine the most important impact categories for the study by selecting those categories that contribute to the environmental impacts more than 1% of the total contribution for the present energy crops study per endpoint category
In all the impact categories, the analysis showed that Reduced tillage II (RT II) S treatment had lower percentages in the environmental impacts compared to the other tillage treatments of the study
Summary
The potential environmental benefits of bioenergy derived from renewable biomass sources have been the subject of research the last years. LCA quantify the potential environmental impacts of a product system over the life cycle, help to identify opportunities for improvement, and indicate more sustainable options where a comparison is made. It is widely accepted by the scientific community that LCA is one of the best methodologies to assess both the environmental burdens of biofuel production, and identify the opportunities for environmental improvement [1]. Mann and Spath [2] published a comprehensive LCA research of a biomass (from almond trees) gasification combined-cycle power system. The significantly different outcomes generated controversial views among scientists, policy makers, and the public
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