Life cycle assessment of an integrated food waste biorefinery for butyric acid production: environmental hotspots and recovery process comparison
4 affiliations
- 1Department of Chemical Engineering, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, 1050, Belgium; Corresponding authors.
- 2Department of Chemical Engineering, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, 1050, Belgium
- 3School of Chemical Engineering, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, 4072, Australia; Center for Microbial Ecology and Technology (CMET), Ghent University, CAPTURE building, Frieda Saeysstraat 1, Ghent, 9052, Belgium
- 4Department of Chemical, Environmental and Materials Engineering, Institute of Biorefineries Research (I3B), University of Jaén, Campus Las Lagunillas s/n, Jaén, 23071, Spain
Abstract
This study evaluated the environmental performance of a novel integrated biorefinery that converts household food waste, one of the largest urban organic waste streams, into high-purity n-butyric acid (BA). The process comprised hydrothermal pretreatment, lactic acid fermentation, and BA fermentation. Two downstream recovery strategies were compared, namely adsorptive separation using zeolite (Scenario 1) and extractive distillation (Scenario 2). A gate-to-gate life cycle assessment and hotspot analysis were conducted using ReCiPe 2016 based on Aspen Plus simulations and detailed process equipment design. Adsorptive separation demonstrated superior environmental performance compared with extractive distillation across all impact categories. At 85% recovery, Scenario 1 required 0.113 MWh/t of electricity and 0.234 MWh/t of heat, compared with 0.261 MWh/t and 3.08 MWh/t, respectively, for Scenario 2, resulting in 29-97% lower endpoint damages. Accordingly, human health, ecosystem, and resource damages associated with product recovery decreased from 3.096 × 10⁻³ to 1.346 × 10⁻³ DALY, from 14.188 × 10⁻⁶ to 10.042 × 10⁻⁶ species·yr, and from 182 to 24 USD2013, respectively. Increasing BA recovery from 85% to 99% reduced endpoint damages by 13–22% in Scenario 2, whereas the corresponding reductions in Scenario 1 were <2%. The results identified BA fermentation as the dominant contributor, accounting for 70–75% of total environmental impacts, while nutrient inputs were responsible for 95–97% of fermentation-related impacts. These findings highlight nutrient management as the primary opportunity for reducing the environmental footprint of food-waste-based BA production and improving the sustainability of urban food waste valorization systems.
Related
- Integrated valorization of rice-stubble and waste cooking oil for rhamnolipid production with process optimization, techno-economic and life-cycle assessment
- Environmental footprint of High-Throughput Screening technologies for enzyme discovery and engineering: a Life Cycle Assessment comparison
- First Preliminary Assessment of Sex-Specific Spawning Migrations in the Honeycomb Grouper (Epinephelus merra) Using Integrated Hydroacoustic and Environmental Assessment
- Integrated alkaline electrolyser-pressure retarded membrane distillation system for ammonia wastewater valorisation: technoeconomic and environmental assessment
- Towards an integrated perspective on ecological value assessment: Evidence from China's maize production
BibTeX
@article{karimi2026life,
title = {{Life cycle assessment of an integrated food waste biorefinery for butyric acid production: environmental hotspots and recovery process comparison}},
author = {Keikhosro Karimi and Azam Aydani and Hafez Maghsoudi and Ramon Ganigué and Ángel Galán-Martín and Joeri F.M. Denayer},
journal = {Sustainable Chemistry for Climate Action},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1016/j.scca.2026.100245},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scca.2026.100245},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Life cycle assessment of an integrated food waste biorefinery for butyric acid production: environmental hotspots and recovery process comparison
AU - Keikhosro Karimi
AU - Azam Aydani
AU - Hafez Maghsoudi
AU - Ramon Ganigué
AU - Ángel Galán-Martín
AU - Joeri F.M. Denayer
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/30
JO - Sustainable Chemistry for Climate Action
DO - 10.1016/j.scca.2026.100245
UR - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scca.2026.100245
AB - This study evaluated the environmental performance of a novel integrated biorefinery that converts household food waste, one of the largest urban organic waste streams, into high-purity n-butyric acid (BA). The process comprised hydrothermal pretreatment, lactic acid fermentation, and BA fermentation. Two downstream recovery strategies were compared, namely adsorptive separation using zeolite (Scenario 1) and extractive distillation (Scenario 2). A gate-to-gate life cycle assessment and hotspot analysis were conducted using ReCiPe 2016 based on Aspen Plus simulations and detailed process equipment design. Adsorptive separation demonstrated superior environmental performance compared with extractive distillation across all impact categories. At 85% recovery, Scenario 1 required 0.113 MWh/t of electricity and 0.234 MWh/t of heat, compared with 0.261 MWh/t and 3.08 MWh/t, respectively, for Scenario 2, resulting in 29-97% lower endpoint damages. Accordingly, human health, ecosystem, and resource damages associated with product recovery decreased from 3.096 × 10⁻³ to 1.346 × 10⁻³ DALY, from 14.188 × 10⁻⁶ to 10.042 × 10⁻⁶ species·yr, and from 182 to 24 USD2013, respectively. Increasing BA recovery from 85% to 99% reduced endpoint damages by 13–22% in Scenario 2, whereas the corresponding reductions in Scenario 1 were <2%. The results identified BA fermentation as the dominant contributor, accounting for 70–75% of total environmental impacts, while nutrient inputs were responsible for 95–97% of fermentation-related impacts. These findings highlight nutrient management as the primary opportunity for reducing the environmental footprint of food-waste-based BA production and improving the sustainability of urban food waste valorization systems.
SN - 2772-8269
ER -