Life cycle inventory analysis of biological hydrogen production by thermophilic and photo fermentation of potato steam peels (PSP)

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2010.05.018

Journal of Cleaner Production

Volume 18, Supplement 1, December 2010, Pages S88-S94

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2010.05.018 Get rights and content

Abstract

The environmental impact of hydrogen production in a 2-step fermentation process from potato steam peels was identified. Based on the ISO 14040, ISO 14044, ecoinvent data base and SimaPro 7.1 software, a life cycle inventory analysis was performed. Reflecting the current state of process development, the LCA shows an impact of 4.3 points (pts) which is at least 5.7 times higher than the selected reference technologies regarded as state-of-the-art. Over half (53.5%) of the environmental impact is generated by the use of phosphate in the fermentation processes. A sensitivity analysis shows a potential impact reduction of 65.8% due to recirculation of sewage or reduction of buffer concentration. The analysis also demonstrates that the production of the process ingredients cause 98.3% of the environmental impact. The impact of the process itself is 0.07 pts which is up to 10 times lower than the reference technologies.

Introduction

Hydrogen presents an environmentally attractive energy carrier; since it can be efficiently converted into electricity without any emissions of greenhouse gases. An application in the transportation sector would lead to a reduction of environmental consequences due to the avoidance of hazard emissions to air. Nevertheless, hydrogen is not a primary energy source because naturally it only occurs in combination with other elements; mainly with oxygen in water or with carbon, nitrogen and oxygen in biomass or fossil fuels and as such, pure hydrogen needs to be manufactured. Currently it can be produced from fossil fuels, mainly natural gas (steam methane reforming), biomass (gasification, fermentation) and water (electrolysis, thermo chemical splitting of water). However, hydrogen production should induce a lower environmental load than other energy carriers, such as gasoline, in order to gain the status of an environmentally friendly energy carrier.

The two promising options for large-scale hydrogen production in the near future are nuclear assisted thermo chemical water splitting and natural gas steam reforming (Solli et al., 2006). Apart from these, biological hydrogen production from biomass gains further importance as a small scale application (Djomo et al., 2008). One of the most promising technologies is hydrogen production from organic residue in a 2-stage bioreactor process, which is investigated by the European research project HYVOLUTION (Claassen & de Vrije, 2006).

The HYVOLUTION process consists of four system steps: pre-treatment, thermophilic fermentation, photo fermentation and gas upgrading. In the pre-treatment the feedstock’s (residues from food processing) high-molecular connections are cracked and mainly fermentable sugars are obtained. The first bioprocess is the thermophilic fermentation, where the sugars of the pretreated feedstocks are converted into hydrogen, carbon dioxide and organic by-products, such as acetic acid and lactate, which still posses a significant energy value. The second process is the photo fermentation, where photoheterotrophic bacteria further convert residual organic acids from thermophilic fermentation to hydrogen using additional energy from light. By combining thermophilic hydrogen fermentation with photo fermentation the yield of hydrogen is increased. The hydrogen obtained from both reactions will be upgraded afterwards in a gas-upgrading device.

The present paper is aimed at evaluating the environmental impact of the non-thermal hydrogen production of HYVOLUTION compared to the environmental impact of methane based hydrogen generation.

Section snippets

Methodology

The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology was chosen to evaluate the environmental impact of the biological hydrogen production. The environmental burdens and benefits of the entire production chain are identified and quantified. The whole LCA was based on the ISO 14040 (International Organization for Standardization, 1997) and 14044 (International Organization for Standardization, 2006) which foresee four steps: (Solli et al., 2006) definition of goal and scope, (2) inventory analysis (LCI),

Goal and scope

The final goal of HYVOLUTION is to establish a technology for decentralized production of hydrogen based on “locally available biomass” (Karaoglanoglou et al., 2008). The life cycle is defined as “cradle to grave”, which means from the source to the disposal of every material used in the production chain. The HYVOLUTION technology itself has the function to produce a widely applicable energy carrier – H₂.

The LCA is deliberately carried out in parallel to the project development in order to

Life cycle inventory

The present analysis is based on potato steam peels (PSP) as a substrate for the HYVOLUTION process. In order to achieve a suitable feedstock for the thermophilic fermentation an enzymatic pre-treatment is applied. In the first fermentation step, acetic acid is assumed as main co-product resulting in a maximum obtainable hydrogen yield. In the second fermentation step the acetic acid is converted to additional hydrogen (Claassen et al., 2005). The product gases of both fermentation steps are

HYVOLUTION PSP 1 (base case)

The total environmental impact of the case HYVOLUTION PSP 1 (Base case) is 4.3 pts. The impact can be allocated to the four process steps: 0.5 pts from the pre-treatment, 0.8 pts from dark fermentation, 2.6 pts from the photo fermentation and 0.4 pts from the gas upgrading. The highest impact categories for the overall process are carcinogens (1.38 pts), fossil fuels (1.07 pts), respiratory inorganics (1.04 pts) and climate change (0.21 pts). Fig. 4 shows further details. The biggest impact on

Discussion and conclusion

At the current state of development, the non-thermal small-scale decentralized hydrogen production shows a 5.7 times higher environmental impact than large scale centralized SMR. A possible process improvement (recirculation of sewage) would lead to an environmental impact that is only twice as high as large scale SMR. In HYVOLUTION PSP 1 (base case) 98.3% of the environmental impact is caused by the inputs (mainly phosphate, base and steam). In contrast, the process emissions or solid outputs

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Non-thermal production of pure hydrogen from biomass: HYVOLUTION
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Life cycle assessment of hydrogen produced from potato steam peels
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P.A.M. Claassen et al.
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Impact of process integration on a two-stage fermentation process for the production of biohydrogen
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ISO 14040: Environmental Management – Life Cycle Assessment – Principles and Framework
(1997)
International Organization for Standardization
ISO 14044: Environmental Management – Life Cycle Assessment – Requirement and Guidelines
(2006)

There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

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Life cycle inventory analysis of biological hydrogen production by thermophilic and photo fermentation of potato steam peels (PSP)

Abstract

Introduction

Section snippets

Methodology

Goal and scope

Life cycle inventory

HYVOLUTION PSP 1 (base case)

Discussion and conclusion

International Journal of Hydrogen Energy

International Journal of Hydrogen Energy

Utilization of biomass for hydrogen fermentation

Impact of process integration on a two-stage fermentation process for the production of biohydrogen

Proceedings of the 17th European Biomass Conference & Exhibition

ISO 14040: Environmental Management – Life Cycle Assessment – Principles and Framework

ISO 14044: Environmental Management – Life Cycle Assessment – Requirement and Guidelines