Life cycle assessment of wafer biscuit production

Abstract

The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method was used to determine the amount of potential emissions generated from the production activities of the wafer biscuit. The objectives of this study were (1) to observe all of input and output of the production process, (2) to analyze the potential of environmental impacts, (3) and to provide alternative improvements in efforts to reduce the environmental impacts. The LCA method consisted of four stages: determination of goal and scope definition, inventory analysis, impact assessment analysis, and interpretation analysis. Based on observations of existing activities, the scope of this research was set for “gate to gate” and the impact analysis included global warming potential, eutrophication, and acidification. The results of the impact analysis showed that production of wafer biscuit produced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of 1.5161 kg-CO2-eq/kg-product, acidification of 0.0115 kg-SO2-eq/kg-product, and eutrophication of 0.0131 kg-PO4 3−eq/kg-product. There were four alternative improvements that should be done to reduce environmental impacts; (1) the use of solar water heater which could decrease GHG emissions by 8%, acidification by 13%, and eutrophication by 0.56%, (2) replacement of refrigerant types could lower GHG emissions by 19%, acidification of 13%, and eutrophication of 0.57%, (3) reuse of cooling water reduced GHG emissions by 7%, acidification by 11%, and eutrophication by 32.21%, and (4) improvement in waste treatment would reduce emissions eutrophication as much as 83.86%.