Life Cycle Assessment of various biorefinery approaches for the valorisation of almond shells

In the near future, sustainable and efficient biorefineries would be essential for the production of commodity chemicals and high-added value compounds. Therefore, in this work, six scenarios differing on the delignification steps and cellulose conversion routes were assessed via Life Cycle Assessme...

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Published inSustainable production and consumption Vol. 28; pp. 749 - 759
Main Authors Sillero, Leyre, Morales, Amaia, Fernández-Marín, Rut, Hernández-Ramos, Fabio, Dávila, Izaskun, Erdocia, Xabier, Labidi, Jalel
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Elsevier Ltd 01.10.2021
Subjects
Almond shell
Biorefinery
Cellulose
Life cycle assesment
Lignin
Oligosaccharides
Lignin
Life cycle assesment
Biorefinery
Almond shell
Oligosaccharides
Cellulose
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Summary:In the near future, sustainable and efficient biorefineries would be essential for the production of commodity chemicals and high-added value compounds. Therefore, in this work, six scenarios differing on the delignification steps and cellulose conversion routes were assessed via Life Cycle Assessment methodology in order to study the environmental impacts derived from the conversion of an abundant agricultural residue (almond shells) into high added-value products and select the most suitable one for large-scale valorisation. The assessments were conducted employing experimental results and processing them by SimaPro software. The main conclusion achieved suggested that the enzymatic hydrolysis of the solid from any delignification step entailed the highest environmental impacts and had the highest relative contribution in all the studied impact categories with a maximum of 74%, which was ascribed to Scenario 5. It was also concluded that the organosolv delignification process affected overall more negatively than the alkaline treatment having bigger impacts especially in abiotic depletion (ADP) and photochemical oxidation (POP) categories. Finally, it can be stated that the best route for valorising the almond shell in a biorefinery facility is composed of autohydrolysis (common for every scenario), alkaline delignification, bleaching and acid hydrolysis steps for the obtaining of oligosaccharides, lignin and nanocrystals as products. [Display omitted]
ISSN:2352-5509
2352-5509
DOI:10.1016/j.spc.2021.07.004