Life-cycle environmental impacts of barley straw valorisation - published.pdf (1.83 MB)
Life-cycle environmental impacts of barley straw valorisation
journal contribution
posted on 2019-06-04, 08:42 authored by Guillermo Garcia-Garcia, Shahin RahimifardShahin RahimifardMost food manufacturers in industrialised countries produce significant amounts of food wastes during their
manufacturing activities. Due to the serious environmental consequences of managing these materials, environmental impact analyses have become popular to identify more sustainable practices for food waste management. Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a useful methodology to assess such environmental impacts. This paper
presents the main results obtained using the LCA methodology to analyse the potential environmental impacts of
waste management for a brewery in the UK. Initially, the main waste types are identified for this industry: barley
straw, malt waste and spent grain, and then barley straw is selected to study its environmental impact in detail.
An alternative, more sustainable way to manage barley straw by extracting its wax with supercritical CO2 is
discussed. SimaPro software is used to both quantify potential environmental impacts and evaluate the overall
environmental performance of this valorisation opportunity, and to compare its modelled environmental impacts
to the current impacts of managing barley straw. Results show that valorising barley straw by this method
generates a high environmental impact due to the energy requirements of the processes involved, principally for
human toxicity (cancer effects), human toxicity (non-cancer effects) and freshwater ecotoxicity impact categories. Using more energy-efficient processes or an alternative energy source would reduce this environmental
impact. The analysis used in this paper allows an objective comparison between different scenarios with the final
aim of supporting the use of sustainable solutions for waste management in the food industry.
Funding
The authors acknowledge the financial support of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) [grant reference EP/ P008771/1].
History
School
- Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering
Published in
Resources, Conservation and RecyclingVolume
149Pages
1 - 11Citation
GARCIA-GARCIA, G. and RAHIMIFARD, S., 2019. Life-cycle environmental impacts of barley straw valorisation. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 149, pp. 1 - 11.Publisher
Elsevier BV (© the authors)Version
- VoR (Version of Record)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/Acceptance date
2019-05-22Publication date
2019-05-27Copyright date
2019Notes
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Elsevier under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ISSN
0921-3449Publisher version
Language
- en