Energy and environmental indices through life cycle assessment of raisin production: A case study (Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province, Iran)

Abstract

The present study aimed to investigate the status of energy consumption and environmental impacts in the raisin production using life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. Required data were collected from 50 grape producers in Dena county and raisin production workshop in Yasuj county through questionnaire and face-to-face interview. The energy equivalent of inputs and outputs was obtained using related specific energy coefficients and environmental indices including abiotic depletion (AD), acidification (AC), eutrophication (EUP), global warming (GW), ozone layer depletion (OLD), human toxicity (HT), fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity (FE), marine aquatic ecotoxicity (ME), terrestrial ecotoxicity (TE) and photochemical oxidation (PO) were compared in vineyard, processing workshop, packaging and transportation phases using Simapro software and CML2 baseline 2000 modeling approach. Results showed that based on the production of 500 g packaged raisin, total input energy for vineyard and processing workshop was calculated as 8.70 and 32.7 MJ and energy ratio was 3.38 and 0.7, respectively. The contribution of electricity energy input in vineyard and grape energy input in processing factory to the related total energy were calculated as 28% and 90%, respectively. Results obtained from the analysis of environmental indices showed that the GW index is 4.258 kg CO2 eq per production of 500 g packaged raisin, which inputs production and consumption in vineyard had a contribution of 95% to GW index. In other indices, emissions related to the vineyard was higher than three other stages. Farmyard manure (FYM), machines and adhesive tape in factory sector were indicated as major contributor to pollutant emissions in vineyard, processing and packaging, respectively.