Abstract
The oil scarcity and the rise in earth temperature have elevated the interest in lignocellulosic biorefineries. Lignin has high potential to be used in various applications including the production of biomaterials and transportation fuels. Among the different sources of lignin, organosolv lignin has the advantage of being sulphur-free and of low ash content compared to other types of industrial lignin. The present study focuses on cradle-to-gate life cycle and cost assessment of a novel organosolv lignin production process from spruce bark. The system boundary included production of tannin, lignin from spruce bark and handling of waste including all the inputs (material and energy) and outputs (emissions) in the process. Baseline scenario and scenarios S1 and S2 were compared to identify the most environmentally and economically suitable scenario. The baseline scenario is lignin production with co-production of tannin and tannin free bark (TFB) from spruce bark; scenario S1 is lignin production from TFB; and scenario S2 is lignin production from TFB with mass allocation. The functional unit was 1 kg lignin produced and ReCiPe 2016 Midpoint (H) method was used for the environmental impact assessment. The results showed that the baseline scenario had higher global warming potential (GWP) (2.14 kg CO2eq.) and total cost (1.959 €/kg) than S1 (1.39 kg CO2 eq. and 1.377 €/kg respectively) and S2 (0.23 kg CO2eq. and 0.998 €/kg respectively) scenarios. The results of sensitivity analysis showed that the use of bioethanol instead of ethanol reduced the burden on GWP but increased the burden on the land use impact category.
Highlights
The increasing global population and industrialization leads to an increasing demand for fuels, materials and chemicals, resulting in many social problems, including energy security and environmental distress (Sun et al, 2018)
Tannin production had significant contribution on all the impact categories due to the use of chemicals. This environmental burden could be reduced in the future by avoiding including such chemicals, as it was shown that relative high tannin extraction yields can be achieved in the absence of chemicals as mentioned by Kemppainen et al (2014) and Ding et al (2017)
Considering tannin free bark (TFB) as a by-product of tannin production would mean that approximately 30% of the burden could be reduced on global warming potential (GWP), 64% on ionizing radiation potential (IRP), 50% on terrestrial acidification potential (TAP) and 45% on human toxicity potential (HTP) impact categories compared to the baseline scenario (Fig. 4)
Summary
The increasing global population and industrialization leads to an increasing demand for fuels, materials and chemicals, resulting in many social problems, including energy security and environmental distress (Sun et al, 2018). The climate change and the shortage of fossil fuels are driving the inventive utilization of renewable resources on earth (Edenhofer et al, 2011). Society needs to move from fossil resources to renewable resources, in which lignocellulosic biomass can play an important role. The lignocellulosic biomass consists mainly of cellulose, hemicellulose Lignin (Matsakas et al, 2019). Whereas some biomass, such as spruce bark, contain tannins or other type of extractives in significant amounts. Among the different sources of lignocellulosic biomass, the one derived from forest residues is an important renewable resource for European countries such as Sweden, where forests cover 57% of the land and play an important role in the national economy (Sveaskog, 2019)
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