Sustainable utilization of oil palm fronds for cellulosic ethanol production: environmental life cycle assessment

摘要

The production of bioethanol involves the use of fossil fuels which are environmentally unfriendly when combusted to produce energy. In view of this, numerous debatable issues concerning the environmental sustainability of bioethanol production have emerged. Though the combustion of bioethanol itself contributes to reduction in greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, their production processes may offset their pros in terms of environmental safety. In this study, the environmental impact assessment of bioethanol production from oil palm fronds (OPFs) was evaluated using life cycle assessment (LCA) tool. Seven environmental impact categories were estimated with the help of GaBi 4 software. It was found that climate change potential was the highest impact (5526.57 g CO_2 eq.) category for the bioethanol production system. However, the combustion of 100% bioethanol contributed a reduction of about 85.69% in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The potential environmentally damaging unit operations were the oil palm cultivation and OPFs pretreatment units. Reduction in the use of toxic chemicals and fertilizers could help minimize the nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide emission which contributed to climate change impact.