INVESTIGADORES
ARENA alejandro pablo
artículos
Título:
Modeling and environmental evaluation of a system linking a fishmeal facility with a microalgae plant within a circular economy context
Autor/es:
RODRIGUEZ M. PAULA; ARCE BASTÌAS, FERNANDO; ARENA, A. P.
Revista:
Sustainable Production and Consumption
Editorial:
Elsevier
Referencias:
Año: 2019 vol. 20 p. 356 - 364
ISSN:
2352-5509
Resumen:
Microalgae cultivation has been proposed as a strategy to capture CO2 from industries. Besides that, feedingmicroalgae cultures with flue gas could improve their growth and environmental performance. Nevertheless, thepotential of microalgae cultivation as a CO2 capture strategy should be contrasted against real volumes of emissionsfrom industries. In view of this fact, we modeled an integrated system in which microalgae capture CO2 from flue gasof a fishmeal and fish oil facility. A cogeneration turbine system provides heat and electricity for fishmeal productionand microalgae cultivation. Further requirements of electricity are fulfilled from the grid, considering different mixes.We constructed a baseline scenario and six alternative scenarios, where the capacity of microalgae plant matches theamount of CO2 released by the cogeneration system. Moreover, we assumed that microalgae biomass could partiallyreplace fishmeal, which allows attaining an additional reduction of emissions. We carried out a carbon balance withand without a life cycle approach to evaluate the environmental performance of the proposed system. Results showedthat the integrated system released less CO2 compared to the traditional one during the operation phase. However,from a life cycle perspective, environmental benefits were only achieved when low carbon electricity was consumed.Otherwise, the integrated system entailed harmful burdens to the environment. Moreover, considering the maximumachievable absorption of CO2 (8.92% reduction of greenhouse gas emission), it would require 3.16 ha to cultivatemicroalgae. These results highlight the importance of including land-use among the life cycle impacts categories whenmicroalgae system are proposed for providing environmental services, such as CO2 capture