Life cycle assessment of polyphenols extraction processes from waste biomass

Abstract

Waste biomass from forestry and wood processing industries is a source to obtain fine chemicals, and its processing is a good example of circular economy, but it generates secondary environmental impacts. the main objective of this study was to analyse the environmental performances of laboratory scale processes for polyphenols extraction from spruce bark by means of life cycle assessment (LcA) and to simulate and evaluate the scale-up possibilities of the most favourable alternative. the assessed extraction processes were: a classic Soxhlet extraction using ethanol as solvent (SE), a high-temperature extraction in 1% NaOH solution (NaOH-SLE) and an ultrasound assisted extraction process (UAE). The functional unit was 1 mg of extracted polyphenols, measured as gallic acid equivalents (mg GAE)/g spruce bark. The life cycle inventory has included specific laboratory scale operations and extraction processes (infrastructure and transport processes were not considered). Life cycle impact assessment was performed with ReCipe 2016 at midpoint. For all extraction processes, the environmental profiles were dominated by the electricity use for heating and this has generated the highest impacts in most of the impact categories, followed by the production and use of ethanol as solvent. for the ultrasound assisted extraction, a scale-up scenario has proven that by raising capacity to a 30 L extraction vessel and by changing the heating source to a biomass-fired boiler, environmental impacts may be greatly diminished. The paper discusses also the uncertainty of lab-scale generated data for LcA. A sensitivity analysis has proven that for this case, the energy efficiency of different lab-scale equipment induce acceptable degrees of uncertainty for the LcA results. Biomass has been considered among the most important renewables, with the greatest economic growth potential in the future. Biomass represents the only natural resource that can be converted into both high value-added products and energy. Therefore, the demand for biomass is increasing worldwide. Consequently, there is a growing need to better understand how biomass can be valorised sustainably, what are the biomass flows in the economy and how the increased pressure on natural resources can be adjusted with environmental and economic sustainability in Europe and globally 1. Particularly, by-products from forestry and wood processing industry appear to be the most important and promising feedstock for recycling and for closing product life cycles, in accordance with the circular economy principles. Currently, the main route for wood bark valorization is the direct energy production by incineration at the woodmill, given its relatively high energy content (high heating value of 20.4-25.1 MJ/kg for resinous bark), but due to reasons like heterogeneity and high ash content this option is not so economically feasible 2. The other main valorisation routes refer to different bio-refinery processes developed for the production of chemicals. The high lignin and extractives co...

UHPLC-HRMS Analysis of Fagus sylvatica (Fagaceae) Leaves: A Renewable Source of Antioxidant Polyphenols

“…Innovative examples are agro-food wastes [2][3][4], or biorefining of forest biomass [5], from which compounds with traditional use in the prevention and/or treatment of different diseases could be favorably isolated [6]. Byproducts from forestry and wood processing industry are promising feedstocks for the extraction of polyphenols, including tannins and other antioxidants [7]. Thus, the selfrenewal of plant matrices such as the deciduous leaves of forest or ornamental trees, could be an alternative reservoir of compounds, exploitable for different useful applications.…”

A critical perspective on uncertainty appraisal and sensitivity analysis in life cycle assessment

“…Analogously, Barjoveanu et al. (2020a) tested the effects of distribution shape (normal, uniform, or triangular) and range (by doubling the standard deviation in a normal distribution), and evaluated how uncertainty in the output was affected in a ceteris paribus context (i.e., when all other parameters were fixed). To produce representative figures, Quinn et al.…”

“…Four studies used statistical testing to define the most appropriate distribution shape for the input parameters based on their data population (Aktas & Bilec, 2012;De Marco et al, 2018;Goulouti et al, 2020;Guo & Murphy, 2012). Analogously, Barjoveanu et al (2020a) tested the effects of distribution shape (normal, uniform, or triangular) and range (by doubling the standard deviation in a normal distribution), and evaluated how uncertainty in the output was affected in a ceteris paribus context (i.e., when all other parameters were fixed). To produce representative figures, Quinn et al (2020) defined weighted distributions for several foreground parameters based on the mass associated with each specific data point.…”

From Circular Economy to Circular Ecology: A Review on the Solution of Environmental Problems through Circular Waste Management Approaches

“…The publications summarized in Tables 1-4 present different methods to solve environmental problems through circular approaches and combining heterogeneous processes, i.e., by applying CE L principles. Among the papers proposing new circular approaches for WM, the majority of them propose solutions to generate valuable products (e.g., adsorption materials, cellulose, chemicals, biofuels, fertilizers and soil improvers from agro-forestry, and zootechnical and food waste) [97,99,[102][103][104][105][106]110,111,113,[117][118][119][120][121]124,131,133,135,141], recover precious nutrients [128,134,136,137], exploiting sustainable sources of energy [45,100,101,109,110,114,115,123,125], and eliminate residual waste [112,126,129,132,[138][139][140].…”