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Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of industrial pine Roundwood production in Brazilian forests

Fabiane Salles Ferro, Diogo Aparecido Lopes Silva, Felipe Hideyoshi Icimoto, Francisco Antonio Rocco Lahr, Sara González-García

Pine (Pinus oocarpa) wood has great economic importance in Brazil. Pine stands represent the second largest reforested area in the country due to their industrial interest. Combining the relevance of industrial pine stands in the country and corresponding environmental concerns, this current study aims to identify and quantify the environmental impacts derived from industrial pine roundwood production in Brazil. The environmental study was developed considering the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology according to ISO14040 framework. The study convers the life cycle of pine roundwood production from cradle-to-forest gate perspective and considers the current practices in the country. The production system was divided in five main stages: Soil preparation, seedlings plantation, forest management, forest harvesting and infrastructure establishment. The environmental profile was estimated considering characterization factors from the ReCiPe method, in terms of twelve impact categories. According to the results, forest harvesting stage was identified as the environmental hotspot being the main responsible of contributions to nine impact categories under assessment with contributing ratios ranging from 21% (e.g., freshwater eutrophication) to 76% (e.g., photochemical oxidants formation). The high amount of fossil fuel required by heavy machinery used in the activities involved in this stage is behind this result. Soil preparation stage reported also an outstanding contribution in categories such as freshwater eutrophication (37%) and toxicity related categories (≈35%). The rationale behind these contributions is associated with the use of chemical fertilizers, mostly superphosphate. The identification of the environmental hotspots in forest biomass production can assist the Brazilian forest practitioners to improve the environmental profile by means of the optimization of forest practices.

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Comparative environmental Life Cycle Assessment of integral revalorization of vine shoots from a biorefinery perspective

Patricia Gullón, Beatriz Gullón, Izaskun Dávila, Jalel Labidi, Sara Gonzalez-Garcia

The use of vine shoots as feedstock in biorefining activities to obtain bioproducts under efficient and optimized conditions could be crucial to make future high added value compounds and processes more sustainable. In this study, five different potential valorization scenarios from vine shoots differing on diverse extraction and delignification steps were assessed from an environmental perspective using the Life Cycle Assessment methodology to identify the most sustainable biorefining route. The main findings from this study reported that an increment on the number of valorization steps involved higher energy and chemical requirements deriving on worse environmental profiles. Scenarios incorporating fermentation of the glucose liquors or organosolv delignification performed the worst profiles. Autohydrolysis, concentration and freeze drying and enzymatic hydrolysis were the main responsible stages of the environmental burdens. Further research should be focused on optimizing chemicals and electricity requirements to develop greener systems.

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