Environmental impact assessment of lignocellulosic lactic acid production: Integrated with existing sugar mills

Daful, Asfaw Gezae; Haigh, Kathleen F.; Vaskan, Pavel; Görgens, Johann F.

doi:10.1016/j.fbp.2016.04.005

Cited by 51 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…Compared to our results, previously published studies assessing LA/PLA production from second generation biomass generally show global warming impacts that are about one order of magnitude lower (Adom & Dunn, ; Daful et al, ). This is mainly explained by the fact that we assign fertilizer value per kg corn stover needed to fulfill the functional unit as part of the system expansion (i.e., deriving benefits from the avoidance of synthetic fertilizer production).…”

Section: Resultscontrasting

confidence: 80%

“…Existing LCA studies performed on biochemicals show important trends and limitations. When biochemicals and derived products are compared to their functionally equivalent fossil‐based products, LCA results indicate that with respect to certain impact categories, biochemicals often perform better (e.g., global warming: Hanes, Cruze, Goel, & Bakshi, ; Madival, Auras, Singh, & Narayan, ; Patel et al, ; Vink & Davies, ; human toxicity: Landis, ; Papong et al, ; acidification: Hanes et al, ; Landis, ), whereas they may perform worse than their fossil‐based counterparts in other impact categories (e.g., particulate matter exposure: Landis, ; Madival et al, ; Smidt et al, ; ecotoxicity: Landis, ; Smidt et al, ; van der Harst, Potting, & Kroeze, ; eutrophication: Breedveld et al, ; Gironi & Piemonte, ; Papong et al, ; Urban & Bakshi, ; land‐use: Daful, Haigh, Vaskan, & Görgens, ; Patel et al, ). However, several studies focus exclusively on assessing global warming impacts and do not include other relevant environmental impacts, thus overlooking burden shifting from one environmental problem to another.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Environmental hotspots of lactic acid production systems

et al. 2019

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Using selected bio‐based feedstocks as alternative to fossil resources for producing biochemicals and derived materials is increasingly considered an important goal of a viable bioeconomy worldwide. However, to ensure that using bio‐based feedstocks is aligned with the global sustainability agenda, impacts along the entire life cycle of biochemical production systems need to be evaluated. This will help to identify those processes and technologies, which should be targeted for optimizing overall environmental sustainability performance. To address this need, we quantify environmental impacts of biochemical production using distinct bio‐based feedstocks, and discuss the potential for reducing impact hotspots via process optimization. Lactic acid (LA) was used as an example biochemical derived from corn, corn stover, and macroalgae (Laminaria sp.) as feedstocks of different technological maturity. We used environmental life cycle assessment (LCA), a standardized methodology, considering the full life cycle of the analyzed biochemical production systems and a broad range of environmental impact indicators. Across production systems, feedstock production and biorefinery processes dominate life cycle impact profiles, with choice in energy mix and biomass processing as main influencing aspects. Results show that uncertainty decreases with increasing technological maturity. When using Laminaria sp. (least mature among selected feedstocks), impacts are mainly driven by energy utilities (up to 86%) due to biomass drying. This suggests to focus on optimizing or avoiding this process for significantly increasing environmental sustainability of Laminaria sp.‐based LA production. Our results demonstrate that applying LCA is useful for identifying environmental impact hotspots at an earlier stage of technological development across biochemical production systems. With that, our approach contributes to improving the environmental sustainability of future biochemical production as part of moving toward a viable bioeconomy worldwide.

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Section: Resultscontrasting

confidence: 80%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental hotspots of lactic acid production systems

et al. 2019

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“…In the past few years, extensive research efforts have been put on developing more efficient separation technologies for LA purification. [30,31,[33][34][35] However, there is a lack of comprehensive summary on the recent development of each of these purification methods. Therefore, a detailed discussion of each category of the purification approaches will be presented in this paper.…”

Section: Purification Of La: Scope Of This Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[44] In recent years, Mg(OH) 2 has been used as a neutralization agent. [34] After filtration, Mg-lactate will react with trimethylamine (R 3 N), forming a triethylamine-LA complex (R 3 N-LA) in an exchange reactor, after thermal decomposition, LA was recovered (Scheme 4).…”

Section: P E R S O N a L A C C O U N T T H E C H E M I C A L R E C O R Dmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recent Advances on Purification of Lactic Acid

Meng

Zhang

Chuanqin

et al. 2020

The Chemical Record

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With increasing interest in developing biodegradable polymers to replace fossil-based products globally, lactic acid (LA) has been paid extensive attention due to the high environment-compatibility of its downstream products. The mainstream efforts have been put in developing energy-efficient conversion technologies through biological and chemical routes to synthesize LA. However, to our best knowledge, there is a lack of sufficient attention in developing effective separation technologies with high atom economics for purifying LA and derivatives. In this review, the most recent advances in purifying LA using precipitation, reactive extraction, emulsion liquid membrane, reactive distillation, molecular distillation, and membrane techniques will be discussed critically with respect to the fundamentals, flow scheme, energy efficiency, and equipment. The outcome of this article is to offer insights into implementing more atomic and energy-efficient technologies for upgrading LA.

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“…In recent years, the demand for lactic acid has been increasing considerably owing to its use as a monomer in the preparation of biodegradable and biocompatible polymer, i.e. PLA (polylactic acid) [1,3], and used as feedstock to produce derivatives such as ethyl esters, which is used to replace hazardous solvents like chlorinated hydrocarbon solvents in certain industrial applications [4].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%