Title
Environmental assessment of digestate treatment technologies using LCA methodology
Date Issued
01 September 2015
Access level
metadata only access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Golkowska K.
Lebuf V.
Vaneeckhaute C.
Michels E.
Meers E.
Benetto E.
Koster D.
Publisher(s)
Elsevier Ltd
Abstract
The production of biogas from energy crops, organic waste and manure has augmented considerably the amounts of digestate available in Flanders. This has pushed authorities to steadily introduce legislative changes to promote its use as a fertilising agent. There is limited arable land in Flanders, which entails that digestate has to compete with animal manure to be spread. This forces many anaerobic digestion plants to further treat digestate in such a way that it can either be exported or the nitrogen be removed. Nevertheless, the environmental impact of these treatment options is still widely unknown, as well as the influence of these impacts on the sustainability of Flemish anaerobic digestion plants in comparison to other regions where spreading of raw digestate is allowed. Despite important economic aspects that must be considered, the use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is suggested in this study to identify the environmental impacts of spreading digestate directly as compared to four different treatment technologies. Results suggest relevant environmental gains when the digestate mix is treated using the examined conversion technologies prior to spreading, although important trade-offs between impact categories were observed and discussed. The promising results of digestate conversion technologies suggest that further LCA analyses should be performed to delve into, for instance, the appropriateness to shift to nutrient recovery technologies rather than digestate conversion treatments.
Start page
442
End page
459
Volume
43
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Ingeniería del Petróleo, (combustibles, aceites), Energía, Combustibles
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-84938738342
PubMed ID
Source
Waste Management
ISSN of the container
0956053X
Sponsor(s)
This research project was financially supported by the European Commission within the frame of the INTERREG IVb NWE Project “Accelarating Renewable Energies through valorization of Biogenic Organic Raw Material (ARBOR)”. The authors wish to express their gratitude to J. de Vries and P. Hoekma (Wageningen University), B. Ryckaert (Inagro) and T. Rehl and J. Müller (University of Hohenheim) for valuable scientific exchange. Dr. Ian Vázquez-Rowe would like to thank the Galician Government for financial support (I2C postdoctoral student grants program). Authors with affiliation to the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain) belong to the Galician Competitive Research Group GRC 2013-032.
Sources of information: Directorio de Producción Científica Scopus