Abstract
The transition toward a circular and biobased economy requires the biorefineries and bio-based industries to become more resource efficient with regards to their waste and by-product management. Organic by-products and waste streams can be an important source of value if used in feasible pathways that not only have a low environmental impact but also preserve or recover their energy, nutrients, and other potentially valuable components. Through development of a multi-criteria assessment framework and its application on a real case, this article provides methodological and practical insights on decision making for enhanced by-product management. Our framework includes 8 key areas and 18 well-defined indicators for assessing the environmental performance, feasibility, and long-term risk of each alternative. We studied six different management options for the stillage by-product of a Swedish wheat-based biorefinery and our results shows that the most suitable options for this biorefinery are to use the stillage either as animal fodder or as feedstock for local biogas production for vehicle fuel. This multi-criteria approach can be used by bio-based industrial actors to systematically investigate options for by-product management and valorisation for a circular and bio-based economy.Graphic
Highlights
A growing body of evidence shows that industrial and developing societies’ historical dependency on fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources is a major driving force behind climate change and several growing environmental and social challenges across the world
The results of the multi-criteria assessment of the considered scenarios, as defined in the method, together with the stakeholders participating in the workshops, were achieved regarding the different by-product management alternatives (Table 5)
In the studied case we developed a multi-criteria framework for assessing and comparing different by-product management alternatives of a biorefinery or biobased industrial system
Summary
A growing body of evidence shows that industrial and developing societies’ historical dependency on fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources is a major driving force behind climate change and several growing environmental and social challenges across the world. An important part of this is better utilisation of bio-based resources to produce renewable and sustainable materials, energy carriers, and services in a so-called circular and bio-based economy [1]. The by-products and wastes from bio-based industries—defined as industries that mainly use renewable biological resources to produce bio-based products and biofuels—can improve the profitability and sustainability of industries if handled well [2, 3]. For any given bio-based industrial system, not all by-product and waste management alternatives are suitable or interesting. Proper assessment of the suitability of different management options can help the decision-makers to select more appropriate options
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