Life cycle assessment of food waste anaerobic digestion with hydrothermal and ionizing radiation pretreatment

Abstract

Extensive research has been conducted on the life cycle assessment of anaerobic digestion of food waste. However, few studies have evaluated the environmental impact of anaerobic digestion from a technical perspective. This study focuses on the environmental impact of using ionization radiation pretreatment technology in the anaerobic digestion of food waste and compares it with that of traditional hydrothermal pretreatment. Model construction, environmental impact assessment, and Monte Carlo simulation calculations were performed using the OpenLCA software. Data for the analysis were obtained from an actual plant in China, experiments, literature, and databases. The results show that the introduction of the proposed ionizing radiation pretreatment causes the treatment of food waste via anaerobic digestion to have the lowest environmental impact in 14 of the 18 categories analyzed. Pretreatment was found to be the most energy-consuming unit in food waste treatment, accounting for 71–75% of the total energy consumption. This research has an important guiding role in the development and application of ionizing radiation pretreatment technology for food waste.