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Life cycle assessment of fuel ethanol from sugarcane in Argentina

  • LCA FOR RENEWABLE RESOURCES
  • Published:
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Abstract

Purpose

The production of bioethanol in Argentina is based on the sugarcane plantation system, with extensive use of agricultural land, scarce use of fertilizers, pesticides, and artificial irrigation, and burning of sugarcane prior to harvesting. The objective of this paper is to develop a life cycle assessment (LCA) of the fuel ethanol from sugarcane in Tucumán (Argentina), assessing the environmental impact potentials to identify which of them cause the main impacts.

Methods

Our approach innovatively combined knowledge about the main impact pathways of bioethanol production with LCA which covers the typical emission-related impact categories at the midpoint life cycle impact assessment. Real data from the Argentinean industry subsystems have been used to perform the study: S1—sugarcane production, S2—milling process, S3—sugar production, and S4—ethanol production from molasses, honey, or sugarcane juice.

Results and discussion

The results are shown in the three alternative pathways to produce bioethanol. Different impact categories are assessed, with global warming potential (GWP) having the highest impact. So, the production of 1 kg of ethanol from molasses emitted 22.5 kg CO2 (pathway 1), 19.2 kg CO2 from honey (pathway 2), and 15.0 kg CO2 from sugarcane juice (pathway 3). Several sensitivity analyses to study the variability of the GWP according to the different cases studied have been performed (changing the agricultural yield, including economic and calorific allocation in sugar production, and modifying the sugar price).

Conclusions

Agriculture is the subsystem which shows the highest impact in almost all the categories due to fossil fuel consumption. When an economic and calorific allocation is considered to assess the environmental impact, the value is lower than when mass allocation is used because ethanol is relatively cheaper than sugars and it has higher calorific value.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to acknowledge the support from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (CTQ2012-37039-C02, DPI2012-37154-C02-02, and ENE2011-28269-C03-03), the University Nacional de Tucumán, and the Argentinean CONICET.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departament d’Enginyeria Química, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Campus Sescelades, Av. Països Catalans 26, 43007, Tarragona, Spain

    María José Amores, Laureano Jiménez & Francesc Castells

  2. Departamento de Ingeniería de Procesos y Gestión Industrial, Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Avda. Independencia 1800, T4002BLR, San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina

    Fernando Daniel Mele

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  1. María José Amores
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  2. Fernando Daniel Mele
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  3. Laureano Jiménez
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  4. Francesc Castells
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Correspondence to María José Amores.

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Responsible editor: Vinod K. Sharma

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Amores, M.J., Mele, F.D., Jiménez, L. et al. Life cycle assessment of fuel ethanol from sugarcane in Argentina. Int J Life Cycle Assess 18, 1344–1357 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-013-0584-2

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