Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of Second-Generation Bioethanol from Tunisian Waste Dates.

Bioethanol is expected to have a major contribution to transportation fuel consumption; hence, environmental analyses are crucial tools to evaluate its environmental performances. In this paper, a life cycle assessment is carried out to study the environmental performance of a bioethanol production system from Tunisian waste dates. The life cycle foreground data were derived from process simulation, while the background data were provided by the Ecoinvent 3.3 database. The impact assessment method applied is the ReCiPe midpoint (H). Seven environmental impact categories are discussed in detail in the interpretation section: global warming, acidification, eutrophication, agricultural land occupation, water depletion, cumulative energy, and cumulative exergy demands. The results indicate that 1 MJ of bioethanol produced from waste dates generates approximately 0.07 kg CO2-eq, which appears comparable with second-generation bioethanol production. One MJ of bioethanol requires approximately 1.087 MJ-eq of primary energy consumption of which 1.065 MJ is nonrenewable. The electric power generation process is the main contributor to most of the environmental impact categories (process hot spot). Therefore, it is strongly recommended to rely on renewable electricity generation to ensure relevant environmental improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]