Sustainability Assessment of Combined Animal Fodder and Fuel Production from Microalgal Biomass

Benjamin W. Portner, Antonio Valente and Sandy Guenther
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Benjamin W. Portner: Bauhaus Luftfahrt e.V., Willy-Messerschmitt-Str. 1, 82024 Taufkirchen, Germany
Antonio Valente: Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, Institute for Chemical and Bioengineering, ETH Zurich, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland
Sandy Guenther: Bauhaus Luftfahrt e.V., Willy-Messerschmitt-Str. 1, 82024 Taufkirchen, Germany

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 21, 1-18

Abstract: We present a comparative environmental and social life cycle assessment (ELCA and SLCA) of algal fuel and fodder co-production (AF + fodder) versus algal fuel and energy co-production (AF + energy). Our ELCA results indicate that fodder co-production offers an advantage in the following categories: climate change (biogenic, land use and land use change, total), ecotoxicity, marine eutrophication, ionizing radiation, photochemical ozone creation, and land use. By contrast, the AF + energy system yields lower impacts in the other 11 out of 19 Environmental Footprint impact categories. Only AF + fodder offers greenhouse gas reduction compared to petroleum diesel (?25%). Our SLCA results indicate that AF + fodder yields lower impacts in the following categories: fair salaries, forced labor, gender wage gap, health expenditure, unemployment, and violation of employment laws and regulations. AF + energy performs favorably in the other three out of nine social indicators. We conclude that the choice of co-products has a strong influence on the sustainability of algal fuel production. Despite this, none of the compared systems are found to yield a consistent advantage in the environmental or social dimension. It is, therefore, not possible to recommend a co-production strategy without weighing environmental and social issues.

Keywords: microalgae; biorefinery; fuel; fodder; feed; life cycle assessment; LCA; SLCA (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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