State-of-the-art in assessing the environmental performance of anaerobic digestion biorefineries
Andrés Martínez-Arce, Vincent O’Flaherty, David Styles
Abstract
Anaerobic digestion (AD) has gained attention in the last decade as a strategic component of the circular bioeconomy (CBE), and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been used to explore the environmental performance of prospective AD-biorefineries. A detailed review of 76 studies underpinned systematic evaluation of environmental hotspots and LCA modelling challenges for AD-biorefinery configurations. Crops constitute the most frequently used feedstocks, while electricity, bioethanol, digestate, animal feed, additives, and platform chemicals represent the most reported products. Feedstock cultivation, energy and chemical inputs, biogenic emissions, and avoided burdens due to product substitution are the main drivers of environmental performance. However, modelling of product substitution, biogas upgrading, digestate management and biogenic carbon cycling is patchy, inconsistent, and often inadequately evidenced. Prospective and dynamic LCA coupled with transparent scenario analysis could address some of these shortcomings, and better represent, inter alia, the climate mitigation efficacy of carbon capture use and storage technologies integrated into AD-biorefineries. These findings provide a guide for LCA practitioners and researchers engaged in the study of biorefinery systems and other CBE measures.