Abstract
There is an increasing interest in developing sustainable systems in the European Union (EU) to recover and upgrade the solid wastes of the olive oil extraction process, i.e. wet husk. A Life Cycle Environmental Impact Assessment (LCIA) of wet husk has been carried out aiming at facilitating an appropriate Life Cycle Management of this biomass. Three scenarios have been considered, i.e. combustion for domestic heat, generation of electric power, and composting. The Environmental Product Declaration and the ReCiPe method were used for Life Cycle Impact Assessment. Domestic heating and power generation were the most important impact factors in damaging human health, ecosystems, and natural resources depletion. Composting was 2-4 orders of magnitude less impacting than domestic heat and power generation. Considering human health, the impact of climate change, human toxicity and particulate matter formation represented the main impact categories. Considering ecosystems, climate change and natural land transformation were the main impact categories. Within natural resources, fossil fuel depletion was impacted three orders more than metal depletion. Within domestic heating and power generation scenarios, storage of wet husk along with the extraction by organic solvent, and the waste treatment were the most impacting phases for global warming potential, ozone layer depletion, acidification and non renewable fossil resources depletion. The results obtained for the waste disposal have been comparatively assessed with respect to the environmental impact of the olive oil production chain.
Highlights
Olive oil represents a food market relevant for the European Union. 82.5% of the world olive oil production takes place in the EU27, i.e. 2.34 of 2.84 million tonnes, in Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal, France, Cyprus, Slovenia and Malta
Taking into account that solid wastes from olive oil extraction are in the range of 50-72% of the olive weight and that liquid waste is 83 and 972 liters per tonne of olives (2PDP and 3PDP, respectively) [5], in the EU the overall wastes produced annually from olive oil extraction are remarkable
And Greece are leading for available liquid waste, i.e. 96% of the overall EU annual production, while Spain provides 57% of the overall EU solid waste
Summary
Olive oil represents a food market relevant for the European Union. 82.5% of the world olive oil production takes place in the EU27, i.e. 2.34 of 2.84 million tonnes, in Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal, France, Cyprus, Slovenia and Malta. 82.5% of the world olive oil production takes place in the EU27, i.e. 2.34 of 2.84 million tonnes, in Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal, France, Cyprus, Slovenia and Malta. The percentage rises to 94.1% of the world olive oil production, i.e. 2.63 million tonnes, if the Countries of the Mediterranean basin are included [1,2]. Three processes are currently in use for olive oil extraction [4], i.e. the traditional process (TP), the two-phase decanter (2PDP) and the three-phase decanter process (3PDP), each of them generating different amounts of solid and liquid waste. An estimate of the wastewater and solid waste produced in the six major olive oil producing EU countries is presented
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