RT Journal Article
T1 Environmental assessment of complex wastewater valorisation by polyhydroxyalkanoates production
A1 Roibás Rozas, Alba
A1 Mosquera Corral, Anuska
A1 Hospido Quintana, Almudena
K1 Best available techniques
K1 Bioplastics
K1 Circular economy
K1 Industrial wastewater
K1 Life cycle assessment
K1 Mixed microbial cultures
AB Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) are biodegradable polymers with renewable origin that are expected to substitute conventional petrochemical plastics. However, before they are commercialized, life-cycle environmental validation is needed, to prove that there is an actual benefit with the replacement of non-renewable plastics with PHA. Nowadays, environmental evaluations assessing bioplastics production at full-scale are scarce due to the lack of data, so experimental results were used to evaluate the feasibility of PHA production employing high load wastewater. A three-stage PHA production system utilising a mixed microbial culture (MMC) was successfully operated for two years employing complex wastewater from a fish-canning industry. The results obtained were scaled-up to define and compare a circular economy scenario performance, with PHA production, with the current linear approach (i.e. effluent generation, treatment and discharge). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that the environmental performance of a MMC-based full-scale PHA production system using saline wastewater is evaluated. Results show an average improvement of ca. 25% for nine out of ten studied categories if the circular economy approach is implemented. The sludge management strategy was a key factor for the environmental validation of the process, and if composting is applied instead of anaerobic digestion, the improvement is reported in eight categories. When a more conservative replacement yield of fossil-based plastic was tested, the circular economy approach was the preferable option in 8 out of 10 categories. The significance of the downstream process was also confirmed by this study, although it was not a barrier to show the feasibility of producing added-value bioproducts under a circular economy approach. Finally, this work proposes new process integration strategies to reduce the environmental burdens of PHA production and increase the body of knowledge on MMC-based processes, an area where LCA case studies are still scarce
PB Elsevier
SN 0048-9697
YR 2020
FD 2020
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10347/23338
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10347/23338
LA eng
NO Science of The Total Environment. Volume 744, 20 November 2020, 140893. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.140893
NO This research was supported by the Spanish Government (AEI) through the TREASURE project [CTQ2017-83225-C2-1-R]. USABLE Packaging project (H2020-BBI-JTI-2018, EU ID: 836884) is also acknowledged. The authors belong to CRETUS Strategic Partnership (ED4331e 2018/01) and the Galician Competitive Research Group (GRC ED431C 2017/29); both programs are co-funded by the FEDER (EU)
DS Minerva
RD 23 abr 2026