Environmental and economic assessment of integrated systems for dairy manure treatment coupled with algae bioenergy production

Abstract

Life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC) are used to investigate integrated algae bioenergy production and nutrient management on small dairy farms. Four cases are considered: a reference land-application scenario (REF), anaerobic digestion with land-application of liquid digestate (AD), and anaerobic digestion with recycling of liquid digestate to either an open-pond algae cultivation system (OPS) or an algae turf scrubber (ATS). LCA indicates that all three “improved” scenarios (AD, OPS, and ATS) are environmentally favorable compared to REF, exhibiting increases in net energy output up to 854GJ/yr, reductions in net eutrophication potential up to 2700kg PO4-eq/yr, and reductions in global warming potential up to 196Mg CO2-eq/yr. LCC reveals that the integrated algae systems are much more financially attractive than either AD or REF, whereby net present values (NPV) are as follows: $853,250 for OPS, $790,280 for ATS, −$62,279 for REF, and −$211,126 for AD. However, these results are highly dependent on the sale price for nutrient credits. Comparison of LCA and LCC results indicates that robust nutrient credit markets or other policy tools are required to align financial and environmental preferability of energy production systems and foster widespread adoption of sustainable nutrient management systems.