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New Gold Open Access Paper by UWM – Journal of Cleaner Production

Environmental external cost of poplar wood chips sustainable production

Click here to read the full article.
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New Gold Open Access STAR-ProBio Publication

Hybridised sustainability metrics for use in life cycle assessment of bio-based products: resource efficiency and circularity

Kadambari Lokesh, Avtar S. Matharu, Ioannis K. Kookos, Dimitris Ladakis, Apostolis Koutinas, Piergiuseppe Morone and James Clark

 

Abstract

The development, implementation and social acceptance of resource efficient, circular, bio-based economies require critical understanding of the whole supply chain from feedstock to end-use. Trust, transparency and traceability will be paramount. Though life cycle assessment (LCA) is a universally chosen approach to fulfil this purpose, the nature of data required and the depth of analysis lead to complex interpretations of the findings. Herein, a new set of hybridised, first-line sustainability indicators, drawn from the principles of green chemistry and resource (material and energy) circularity, are reported. These flexible, potentially stand-alone metrics are demonstrated via application to an exemplary comparative LCA, incorporating the hybridised indicators including hazardous chemical use, waste generated, resource circularity and energy efficiency, from the “gate-to-gate” stages for the bio-based case studies and their petro-derived commercial counterparts. These metrics were observed to quantify critical new information relevant to our transition to a circular economy, bridging significant gaps in contemporary environmental impact assessment methodologies. Appropriate additional evaluations that examine the performance of metrics, when the embedded resource efficiency and circularity strategies are omitted, have also been undertaken and reported. The data drawn from employing these methods are crucial to inform and encourage operational optimisation, transparency in sustainability reporting and practices to a significant number of value-chain actors including manufacturers, policy makers and consumers.

Click here to read the full article.

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WP7 meeting in Leipzig

A 3-day meeting took place in Leipzig to achieve the results expected within the WP7. The participants from Unibo, DBFZ, TUB, ECOS, USC and UWM worked together on how to assess the ILUC risk of bio-based products, define mitigation options to reduce it and identify a proper methodology for policy recommendations.

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EURAS Conference 2019

The 24th edition of the EURAS Conference will be held in Rome on the 13-15 June 2019. The conference theme is “Standards for a Bio-Based Economy”.

Download here the Call for Papers!

Please send any enquiries to Piergiuseppe Morone and Francesca Govoni at: EURAS-2019@unitelmasapienza.it

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Exploring the production of bio-energy from wood biomass. Italian case study.

Sara González-García, Jacopo Bacenetti

The concerns related to the environmental impact related to energy production from fossil fuel are increasing. In this context, the substitution of fossil fuel based energy by bio-energy can be an effective solution. In this study, the production of electricity and heat in Italy in a combined heat and power plant (CHP) based on an Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) turbine from wood based biomass both from forest and agricultural activities has been analysed considering four potential alternative scenarios to the current energy status: biomass from very short rotation forestry (VSRF) poplar and willow stands as well as residues from natural forests and from traditional poplar plantations. The evaluation has been performed by applying Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method and an attributional cradle-to-gate approach has been followed. The expected savings of greenhouse gases emission and fossil fuels demand have been quantified, as well as derived emissions of toxic pollutants and substances responsible for acidification, eutrophication and photochemical oxidant formation. The results have been also compared with the conventional Italian scenario considering the current Italian electricity profile and heat production from natural gas. Among the different scenarios, due to the lower transport distance, the use of biomass from traditional poplar plantation residues shows the lowest impact. The biomass combustion emissions are the main hotspot for several evaluated impact categories (e.g., particulate matter formation, human toxicity). In fact, when the produced bio-energy is compared to the reference system (i.e., electricity produced under the Italian electric profile) the results do not favor bio-energy systems. The results reported in this study support the idea that forest residues would be an interesting and potential feedstock for bio-energy purposes although further research is required specifically with the aim of optimizing biomass supply distances.

Click here to read the article.

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#BLOG_Two interesting activities of the RoadToBio project!

Nine identified bio-based opportunities for the Chemical Industry

In the BBI-funded project RoadToBio with the main goal to develop a Roadmap to show the path to increase the bio-based share up to 25%  in the chemical industry until 2030, nine business cases that exemplify the possibilities for the chemical industry to produce more bio-based products have been identified. For further information please follow the link and listen to a webinar held by the consortium on July 11 to present these business cases.

Link: https://www.roadtobio.eu/index.php?page=webinars

 

Survey “Key barriers and hurdles on bio-based products – what is your opinion?”

RoadToBio wants to offer you the possibility to express your opinion on important barriers to bio-based products that hinder market uptake. Be part of the journey into a bioeconomy-based future. How? Complete the survey by the 31st August and return it back to the RoadToBio consortium.

For more information: https://www.roadtobio.eu/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=22&cntnt01origid=5&cntnt01returnid=5