Journal of Cleaner Production 275 (2020) 122888

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Journal of Cleaner Production

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro

Comparative life cycle assessment of aquaponics and hydroponics in

the Midwestern United States
Peng Chen a, 1, Gaotian Zhu b, 1, Hye-Ji Kim b, Paul B. Brown a, Jen-Yi Huang c, d, *
a
Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States
b
Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States
c
Department of Food Science, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States
d
Environmental and Ecological Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: With high productivity and low land and water use, controlled-environment agriculture (CEA) like
Received 9 February 2020 aquaponics and hydroponics has become a promising solution to feed the rapidly growing global pop-
Received in revised form ulation. However, both aquaponic and hydroponic systems require high energy input, leading to po-
29 May 2020
tential environmental burdens. This cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment (LCA), for the first time,
Accepted 13 June 2020
Available online 12 July 2020
compared the environmental performance, on an economic basis, of aquaponics and hydroponics with
identical system design in Indiana, US. For a one-month cultivation period, tilapia and six vegetables
Handling Editor: Zhifu Mi produced in the aquaponic system had almost twice the total value of the vegetables from the hydro-
ponic system. Aquaponics produced 45% lower endpoint environmental impact than hydroponics.
Keywords: Electricity use for greenhouse heating and lighting, and water pumping and heating contributed to the
Aquaponics majority of the environmental impacts of both systems, which was followed by the production of fish
Hydroponics feed and fertilizers. However, changing the energy source from coal to wind power could make the
Life cycle assessment hydroponic system more environment-friendly than the aquaponic system. This LCA study can provide
Economic functional unit
CEA farmers with the groundwork to reduce the environmental cost of their production.
Controlled-environment agriculture
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Sustainable aquaculture

1. Introduction
World population is expected to be 9.7 billion by 2050 with
more than two-thirds of the people living in urban areas, and the
projected food demand of 70e100% over the current food pro-
duction levels (FAO, 2011; NSF, 2015). However, open-field agri-
culture (OFA) is not an adequate approach to meet the near-term
demand because of its considerable water and land uses and
associated environmental impacts (Gleick, 2010; NSF, 2015). In
contrast, controlled-environment agriculture (CEA) produces food
in an enclosed structure under optimized conditions for the
maximum yield of plant crops and/or aquatic animals using soilless
systems such as hydroponics, aquaponics, and recirculating aqua-
culture system (RAS) (Go
mez et al., 2019). Hydroponic lettuce
culture offered an 11-time higher yield per acre of land with 13
* Corresponding author. 745 Agriculture Mall Drive, West Lafayette, IN, 47907,
USA.
E-mail address: huang874@purdue.edu (J.-Y. Huang).
1
Contributed equally to this work.
times less water use, compared to lettuce grown in OFA (Barbosa
et al., 2015). More than 748 million dollars of vegetables and
fresh-cut herbs were produced by this surging technology in the US
in 2017, representing an 18% increase over 2012 (Perdue and Hamer,
2019). Given its great potential for high productivity, and water and
nutrient use efficiency along with reduced environmental footprint
(Yang and Kim, 2020a), CEA could be a promising solution to feed
the rapidly growing global population.
Hydroponics is a technology for growing plants using nutrient
solutions without soil. Compared to OFA, hydroponics needs less
water and chemical fertilizer inputs as the spent nutrient solution
can be recirculated for an extended period. Aquaponics in-
corporates RAS into hydroponics to produce plants and aquatic
species in a system linked by water and nutrients, in which fish feed
is the major nutrient input in the system to provide fish with
protein-rich diet and essential nutrients (Yang and Kim, 2020b). In
aquaponics, rather than being discharged and causing eutrophica-
tion and hypoxia in nearby water bodies, nutrient-rich wastewater
derived from RAS, containing ammonia and feces excreted by fish,
is directed to the hydroponic component, allowing nutrients to be
recycled for plant growth. Therefore, it is possible to achieve zero or

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.122888
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2 P. Chen et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 275 (2020) 122888
reduced wastewater discharge through aquaponic production sys-
tems (Yang and Kim, 2020a). Additionally, aquaponics can elimi-
nate fertilizer use, and thus the environmental burdens caused by
the production of chemical fertilizers, especially nitrogen fertil-
izers, such as fossil fuel depletion, global warming, and acidification
(Torrellas et al., 2012). However, both aquaponics and hydroponics
require high electricity input for heating, lighting, and water
pumping which are essential for environment control (Yildizhan
and Taki, 2018), potentially leading to high global warming
impact. Although there have been comparative studies between
aquaponic and hydroponic systems on crop production (Delaide
et al., 2016; Pantanella et al., 2012; Suhl et al., 2016; Yang and
Kim, 2019), their environmental performance was rarely
compared in a systematic way.
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been widely used for evaluating
the resource use and emissions of agricultural and aquacultural
production (Mattsson et al., 2000; Roy et al., 2009; Skowron ~ ska and
Filipek, 2014; Sun, 2009). LCA is considered the most holistic
approach to develop a more sustainable CEA system since the
method quantifies both direct and indirect environmental impacts.
Maucieri et al. (2018) evaluated a micro aquaponic system through
LCA and found all the processes involved in auqaponics operation
including material and electricity inputs contributed more than
84% of the total environmental impacts, and system building
accounted for 9e15%. While the infrastructure of aquaponics affects
the amount of input required (i.e., fertilizer, energy, etc.) and pro-
ductivity, the economic viability of an aquaponic system is mainly
determined by the variety and value of its resulting products. Most
of the previous LCA studies on aquaponics were conducted on
lettuce considering it as the main product and fish as co-product
(Cohen et al., 2018; Forchino et al., 2017). This may result in an
underestimation of the environmental impacts of fish, especially
when they are allocated based on product mass.
In this study, the environmental performance of hydroponic and
aquaponic systems was, for the first time, explicitly compared using
an identical infrastructure. We performed a cradle-to-gate LCA on
these two independent systems mainly based on our primary
experimental data collected over a one-month period. Both sys-
tems produced six plant species in addition to tilapia in aquaponics.
This LCA study aimed to provide farmers with the groundwork to
design and operate CEA production at reduced environmental cost.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Aquaponic and hydroponic systems
Aquaponic and hydroponic systems with an identical design
were constructed in a greenhouse at Purdue University in West
Lafayette, IN, USA. As shown in Fig. S1, each system consisted of a
tank (350 L; containing fish for aquaponics, or nutrient solution for
hydroponics), a solids removal unit (20 L), two-stage biofilter tanks
(40 L), and a plant growth bed (350 L; 1 m2) (Wongkiew et al., 2017;
Yang and Kim, 2019). Plants were held by a foam raft which was set
on the top edges of the plant growth bed. The plant holders allowed
a growing density of 24 plants. The two systems shared a 75 W
peristaltic pump (Masterflex, Cole-Parmer, Vernon Hills, IL, USA).
The total water volume in each aquaponic/hydroponic unit was
700 L, which was circulated at a flow rate of 125 L/h, giving a water
retention time of 5.6 h in the fish/nutrient solution tank and in the
floating system unit (Yang and Kim, 2020c). Each growth bed in the
hydroponic or fish tank in the aquaponic system had air stones
connected to a 43.8 W air pump to maintain dissolved oxygen (DO)
concentration above 6 mg/L, and a 250 W heater to maintain the
water temperature at 23  C. The pH of both systems were kept at 6
using a combination of base solutions (1 N KOH and 0.05 N
Ca(OH)2). For plants to grow with the optimum nutrient environ-
ment, the electrical conductivity (EC) of the hydroponic system was
kept at 1.5 dS/m over the experimental periods using the HydroGro
hydroponic fertilizer (CropKing, Lodi, OH, USA) and calcium nitrate
(CropKing, Lodi, OH, USA).
2.2. Fish and plant cultivations
The fish tank was stocked with 6.4 kg (stocking density: 18.3 kg/
m3) Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus), which was fed a commercial
fish feed (AquaMax® Sport Fish 500, Purina® Mills, Gray Summit,
MO, USA) at 64 g/day. Six plant species were grown in the plant
growth bed, including Swiss chard (Beta vulgaris L.), kale (Brassica
oleracea L.), mustard green (Brassica juncea L.), cilantro (Coriandrum
sativum L.), lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.), and arugula (Eruca vesicaria
L.). The seeds were obtained from a commercial source (Johnny’s
Selected Seeds, Winslow, ME, USA) and sown in seedling trays (Jiffy,
Lorain, OH, USA). After the third true leaf of seedlings emerged,
uniform healthy seedlings were randomly chosen and transplanted
into mesh pots (diameter: 7.6 cm, height: 6.4 cm) each containing
85 g of clay pebbles, then transferred to each system. The photo-
period was 14 h (8:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.) consisting of natural
daylight with supplemental lighting using high-pressure sodium
(HPS) lamps (1000 W, PARsource GROW LIGHT, Petaluma, CA, USA).
The day (8:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.) and night (10:00 a.m. to 8:00
a.m.) temperatures were set at 24 and 18  C, respectively.
Depending on the ambient temperature, the greenhouse was
heated using radiant hot-water-pipe heating when needed.
Furthermore, retractable shade curtains regulated by an environ-
mental control system (Maximizer Precision 10, Priva Computers
Inc., Vineland Station, ON, Canada) were used to modulate the
greenhouse temperature.
2.3. Water quality
To ensure that fish and plants grew under a healthy environ-
ment, water quality of the fish tank (or nutrient reservoir in hy-
droponic system) and hydroponic-culture unit (DO, temperature,
pH, and EC, as shown in Table S1) were measured daily at 9:00 a.m.
before feeding using the HQ40d Portable Water Quality Lab Pack-
age (HACH Corp., Loveland, CO, USA).
2.4. Plant and fish yields
At harvest, the shoot parts were carefully removed from the
roots, and the fresh weight of the shoot was determined immedi-
ately using an analytical balance. Total fish weight was measured at
the beginning and at the end of the experiment by carefully col-
lecting an individual fish from the fish tank and transferring it into a
bucket filled with water. The difference between initial and final
total weight was used to determine the fish weight increment over
a one-month cultivation. Feed conversion ratio (FCR) was calcu-
lated by the ratio of total feeding amount (g) to fish biomass
increment (g).
2.5. Goal and scope of LCA
The main goal of this cradle-to-gate study was to identify the
environmental impact hotspots of the aquaponic and hydroponic
systems, thus more sustainable practices can be recommended to
CEA producers. The intended audience of this work included
aquaponic and hydroponic farmers who want to improve the
environmental performance of their production.
It is important to note that the products of aquaponics and hy-
droponics are different. In addition to plants, aquaponics produces
 P. Chen et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 275 (2020) 122888
Fig. 1. Process flow diagram of (a) aquaponic and (b) hydroponic production. Dashed
box refers to the system boundary, T refers to transportation.
fish which generally has a higher market price. Therefore, instead of
physical functional unit (FU), e.g., mass and volume, which is
commonly used in LCA studies, we considered the difference in
product price by applying a monetary FU here for an economic-
based comparison, which was defined as 1 US dollar (market
price) of the products produced by each system.
Fig. 1 shows the system boundaries of this work, which were
similar to previous aquaponic studies (Boxman et al., 2017;
Forchino et al., 2017; Maucieri et al., 2018). Both production sys-
tems were analyzed from cradle to farm gate, mainly including the
production of fertilizers, chemicals and fish feed, feed milling, and
farming operation. Fish hatchery was not considered here due to its
small impact on intensive aquaculture system (Ayer and Tyedmers,
2009; Pelletier et al., 2009). After milling at Land O’Lakes Purina®
Feed (Frankfort, IN, USA), fish feed was transported for 38.62 km to
the retail outlet (Lafayette, IN, USA), then to the experimental site
(2.74 km). Chemicals and fertilizers were transported from Lafay-
ette, IN (0.48 km) and Lodi, OH (479.58 km), respectively. As shown
in Table S2, the material inputs for constructing the aquaponic and
hydroponic systems were either measured onsite or estimated,
including polyvinylchloride (PVC) pipes, high density polyethylene
(HDPE)-made fish tank, plant grow bed, solids removal unit, and
biofilter tanks, polystyrene (PS) foam raft, and pumps. Furthermore,
postharvest handling activities and transportation were not
included within the boundaries.
2.6. Life cycle inventory
Table 1 lists the life cycle inventory data on all the stages in the
system boundaries of the production of 1-US dollar vegetables/fish.
Unless specified otherwise, all data were primary, collected from
the experiment conducted between February 25 and March 25,
2019. Due to the period of cold weather, the greenhouse air was
heated, and the associated electricity consumed by the aquaponic
and hydroponic units was allocated using the area occupied by each
unit (3.62 m2) in the greenhouse. The electricity for heating, with
coal being the main energy source in Indiana, US, was modeled and
estimated via Virtual Grower software v3.1 (USDA). Since the fish
3
feed used in this study is a commercial product (Purina® Aqua-
Max® Sport Fish 500) and its precise composition is not disclosed,
we referred to the composition of another commercial trout feed
used by Avadí et al. (2015) for the inventory, which had highly
similar ingredients and nutrient contents (i.e., approximately 42%
protein, 12% lipid, 1% phosphorus, and 11% water). Furthermore, the
emissions from each system, including NOx through air and NH3,
NO3 , and PO34 through wastewater were considered.
The environmental profiles of both systems were analyzed
based on the monetary functional unit, i.e., the economic values of
their products. The unit prices (per kg) of fish and vegetables were
collected from the Aquatic Research Lab at Purdue University and
the USDA database (USDA, 2019), respectively, in April 2019. Table 1
also shows the total economic value of the products from a system
estimated by multiplying the unit price of each product by its yield
during the experimental period.
2.7. Impact assessment
The environmental performance of the developed aquaponic
and hydroponic systems was determined and compared based on
their midpoint impacts (CML-IA baseline method v3.05) and
endpoint impacts (Eco-indicator 99 (H) v2.10). Eleven midpoint
environmental impacts were characterized here, including fossil
fuel abiotic resource depletion (AD, kg Sb eq), global warming po-
tential (GWP, for 100-year time horizon, kg CO2 eq), acidification
potential (AP, kg SO2 eq), eutrophication potential (EP, kg PO34 eq),
non-fossil fuel abiotic depletion (AD non-fossil fuels, kg Sb eq),
ozone layer depletion (ODP, kg CFC-11 eq), human toxicity (HTP, kg
1,4-DB eq), freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity (FAE, kg 1,4-DB eq),
marine aquatic ecotoxicity (MAE, kg 1,4-DB eq), terrestrial ecotox-
icity (TE, kg 1,4-DB eq), photochemical oxidation (PO, kg C2H4 eq).
The endpoint impacts, in terms of damages to human health,
ecosystem quality, and resources, were characterized and aggre-
gated into a single score. All the data were analyzed using SimaPro
v8.3 software.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Inventory analysis
The total yields of vegetables in the aquaponic and hydroponic
systems were similar (4128 vs. 3872 g/1.5 m2/month), with eco-
nomic values of $16.21 and $15.37, respectively (Table 1). The yields
of these two experimental systems were found to be comparable to
those of commercial aquaponics (Bailey and Ferrarezi, 2017)
growing lettuce, kale, collards, Swiss chard, and basil (4840 g/
1.5 m2/month), and commercial hydroponics (Barbosa et al., 2015)
for lettuce (5125 g/1.5 m2/month). The fertilizer use efficiency
(fertilizer use per unit of product, kg/kg) of hydroponics in this case
study (N: 0.0022, P: 0.0018, K: 0.0067) was similar to that of a
vertical hydroponic croft in Lyon, France (N: 0.0026, P: 0.0013, K:
0.0036) (Romeo et al., 2018). The tilapia had a comparable FCR of 1.2
to the fish raised in RAS (Avadí et al., 2015; Davidson et al., 2011)
and aquaponics (Li et al., 2019), indicating that the fish were in a
healthy and fast-growing state in our study. Daily weight gain of
tilapia is typically slow during the first 85 days (0.5 g/day) but in-
creases up to 3 g/day during the grow-out stage from day 86 to day
180 (Teichert-Coddington, 1996). Since the growth rate of tilapia
reported in this study (0.99 g/day) was collected from a one-month
period, it is important to note that the average daily weight gain
over the full 180-day growth cycle of tilapia and thus the value of
fish in the aquaponics could be underestimated if they are pro-
jected accordingly.
Because of the higher total product value, the aquaponic system
4 P. Chen et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 275 (2020) 122888

Table 1
Life cycle inventory of aquaponic and hydroponic systems for a 1-month operation.

Items Aquaponics Hydroponics Database

Inputsa Total Per FU Total Per FU

Water (L) 100 3.5 60 3.9

Electricity (kWh, IN, US) (Virtual Grower v3.1) US-EI 2.2
Greenhouse heating 222 7.76 222 14.44
Lighting 210 7.34 210 13.66
Water heater 39 1.36 39 2.53
Water pump 27 0.94 27 1.76
Air pump 21 0.73 21 1.36
Transportation of feed, chemicals and fertilizers (tkm) 0.08 0.0028 0.036 0.0023 US LCI
Fish feed (g) 1920 67.13
Ingredients (place of origin)c (Avadí et al., 2015) Agri-footprint (mass allocation)
Fish meal (PE) 384 13.43
Meat meal (poultry, NL) 288 10.07
Blood meal (poultry, NL) 96 3.36
Soybean meal (BR) 384 13.43
Fish oil (PE) 115.2 4.03
Soy oil (BR) 19.2 0.67
Palm oil (MY) 19.2 0.67
Maize (AR) 96 3.36
Maize gluten meal (US) 96 3.36
Rice (broken, CN) 192 6.71
Wheat (AR) 192 6.71
Electricity (kWh, IN, US) (Henriksson et al., 2017) 0.118 0.004 US-EI 2.2
Diesel (Henriksson et al., 2017) 0.047 0.002 US-EI 2.2
Fertilizer (HydroGro) (g) 75.2 4.89 US-EI 2.2
Total N 3.23 0.21
P2O5 6.99 0.46
K2O 26 1.71
MgSO4 2.93 0.19
Chemicals (g) US-EI 2.2
Ca(NO3)2 60 3.92
Ca(OH)2 1.63 0.057 0.19 0.012
KOH 58 2.03 6.71 0.46
Construction (adjusted for lifetime) Ecoinvent 3 APOS
HDPE, granulate (kg)
Fish tank 0.0608 0.0021 0.0608 0.0040
Biofilter tank 0.0068 0.0002 0.0068 0.0004
Settling tank 0.0034 0.0001 0.0034 0.0002
Plant grow bed 0.0881 0.0031 0.0881 0.0057
PS foam raft board (kg) 0.0075 0.0003 0.0075 0.0005
PVC pipe (kg) 0.0040 0.0001 0.0040 0.0003
40W pump (piece) 0.0155 0.0005 0.0155 0.0010

Emissions (g)a Total Per FU Total Per FU

NOx 9.09 0.32 1.39 0.09

NH3 0.08 0.00 0.00 0.00
NO3 25.49 0.89 1.20 0.08
PO34 28.21 0.99 10.02 0.65

Outputsa Weight (g) Economic value (USD)b Weight (g) Economic value (USD)b

Tilapia (weight gain in one month) 1606 12.39 0 0

Swiss chard 905 2.63 1077 3.14
Kale 816 1.78 633 1.38
Arugula 568 6.14 496 5.36
Cilantro 185 1.20 221 1.45
Boston lettuce 765 2.52 802 2.64
Mustard green 889 1.94 643 1.40
Total 5734 28.60 3872 15.37
a
Data on item without reference cited is measured onsite.
b
Based on the market price in April 2019.
c
Origin of fish feed ingredient: AR, Argentina; BR, Brazil; CN, China; MY, Malaysia; NL, the Netherlands; PE, Peru; US, United States.

used less water per FU (i.e., 1 US dollar-worth products) than hy-
droponics although it had a 1.67-fold higher total water con-
sumption. Greenhouse heating and lighting for plant growth were
the most electricity-consuming components in this study, ac-
counting for 43% and 40% of total usage, while energy for fish feed
production only contributed negligibly. The two systems also
exhibited different profiles of the nutrients/chemicals added.
Commercial fertilizers and Ca(NO3)2 were used only for the hy-
droponic system to ensure the required nutrient concentration for
plant growth. However, an almost 9 times higher volume of KOH/
Ca(OH)2 was needed for the aquaponics to maintain the pH of water
because pH decreases rapidly in aquaponics compared to hydro-
ponics due to nitrification and CO2 excretion by fish (Yang and Kim,
2019). To resemble a realistic production, where wastewaters are
 P. Chen et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 275 (2020) 122888
Fig. 2. Comparison between the midpoint environmental impacts of aquaponics and
hydroponics (in log scale). AD: fossil fuel abiotic depletion, GWP: global warming
potential, AP: acidification potential, EP: eutrophication potential.
discharged and replaced by freshwater, the emissions of nitrogen
and phosphorus pollutants were included in the assessment. The
emissions of NOx, NO3 , and PO34 from the aquaponics system were
almost 7-, 21-, and 3-folds, respectively, higher than those from the
hydroponic system (Table 1), probably due to high fish feed input,
active denitrification, and high fish-to-plant ratio. Up to 20% of
wastewater is discharged even in recirculating aquaponic systems
to maintain water quality (Delaide et al., 2017; Jaeger et al., 2019).
Thus, developing a zero-discharge aquaponic system with more
efficient uses of nitrogen and phosphorus is essential.
3.2. Midpoint impacts of aquaponics and hydroponics
3.2.1. Comparison between aquaponics and hydroponics
Since CEA operation is generally recognized for high energy
demand, here we present the four midpoint impacts which are
related most closely to fossil energy use: AD, GWP, AP, and EP
(Maucieri et al., 2018). The results of the other seven impact cate-
gories are reported in the Supplementary Material (Fig. S2). The
environmental impacts of the hydroponic system (AD: 393.82 MJ;
GWP: 38.22 kg CO2 eq; AP: 0.24 kg SO2 eq; EP: 0.07 kg PO34 eq)
were generally almost twice as high as the impacts generated by
the aquaponic system (AD: 212.56 MJ; GWP: 20.77 kg CO2 eq; AP:
0.13 kg SO2 eq; EP: 0.04 kg PO34 eq), as shown in Fig. 2. With the
identical configuration and energy consumption, the higher envi-
ronmental impacts associated with the hydroponic systems can be
mainly attributed to the lower total value of its products, which was
only half of that of the aquaponics (Table 1), resulting in a larger
amount of products needed to fulfill the FU. Fig. 3 shows the single-
score results of the endpoint impacts of the two systems. The hy-
droponics caused 2 damage points, which was approximately 1.8
times higher than that produced by the aquaponics. The results
indicated that the integration of fish cultivation into a CEA system
can increase production value, and consequently improve its
environmental performance on an economic basis.
5
Fig. 3. Comparison between the endpoint environmental impacts (single score) of
aquaponics and hydroponics.
The environmental profile of the aquaponic system (Fig. 4a)
showed that electricity use was the dominant contributor to all the
impact categories: AD (99.5%), GWP (98.8%), AP (99.0%), and EP
(90.8%). Energy consumption has been identified as a major chal-
lenge for the sustainability of aquaponics regardless of facility scale
(Forchino et al., 2017; Maucieri et al., 2018; Rakocy, 2007). Boxman
et al. (2017) conducted an LCA study on a commercial-scale aqua-
ponic system and found that electricity use contributed the greatest
to GWP (74%), AP (93%), and EP (465%). Similar findings were re-
ported by Maucieri et al. (2018) that electricity use was the main
source of environmental burden of a micro-educational aquaponic
system. Despite the high electricity usage in each system, aqua-
ponics was considered more environment-friendly than hydro-
ponics because it produced the food with a greater value. Fish feed
production was the second major contributor (Fig. 4a) to the AD
(0.5%), GWP (1.2%), and AP (0.9%), while emissions from aquaponics
operation accounted for the second-highest EP (7.8%). These results
indicated that the impacts associated with nutrient solution
discharge should not be neglected in LCA studies on aquaponics.
Electricity use contributed even more significantly (>99.9%) to
all the environmental impacts of the hydroponic system (Fig. 4b),
greenhouse heating was responsible for more than 42.7%, followed
by greenhouse lighting (40.4%) then water pump and heater op-
erations (16.7%). The high contribution of electricity use to the
environmental impacts of both aquaponics and hydroponics can be
attributed to the energy source, which consists of 88% of coal in
Indiana, US. Coal-fired power plants are known to produce
numerous pollutants, including sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen ox-
ides (NOx), particulate matter (PM), and heavy metals. It is also
responsible for one-third of the CO2 emissions in the US, making
coal-powered electricity a significant contributor to global warm-
ing (Freese, 2008).
It is important to note that both the aquaponic and hydroponic
systems used in this study are rigid and considered as long-term
6 P. Chen et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 275 (2020) 122888

Fig. 4. Environmental profiles of (a) aquaponic and (b) hydroponic systems. AD: fossil fuel abiotic depletion, GWP: global warming potential, AP: acidification potential, EP:
eutrophication potential.

infrastructures with lifetimes of at least 7 (polystyrene foam raft

and pumps) to 20 (PVC pipes and HDPE-made components) years
(Ghamkhar et al., 2020). Because our experiment was conducted
over a short period (i.e., 1 month), the environmental impacts
associated with the material uses for system construction were
negligible (less than 0.12% for all the four categories, as shown in
Table S3) and are not reported in Fig. 4.

3.2.2. Environmental impacts of fish feed and fertilizers

Although the environmental impacts contributed by fish feed
(aquaponics) and fertilizers (hydroponics) were less than 2% for all
the four categories in this study, their effects will become important
if CEAs are powered by renewable energy or located in tropical and
subtropical regions. Boxman et al. (2017) found that fish feed used
for a commercial aquaponic system without supplemental lighting
and heating was the second-highest contributor to the environ-
mental impacts (GWP: 32%; AP: 18%; EP: 1217%).
The environmental impacts of fish feed were higher than those
of fertilizers (i.e., HydroGro and Ca(NO3)2) by 4, 11, 16, and 31 times
for AD, GWP, AP, and EP, respectively, as shown in Fig. 5. Feed
production accounts for a large portion of the environmental im-
pacts generated by aquaculture systems (Henriksson et al., 2012).
For example, fish feed was responsible for 73% and 32% of the total
GWP of trout flow-through system and turbot recirculating system,
respectively (Aubin et al., 2009). Moreover, the environmental
performance of fish feed is strongly influenced by its ingredients Fig. 5. Midpoint impacts of fish feed (for aquaponics) and fertilizers (HydrGro and
and composition (Pelletier and Tyedmers, 2007). Feed is formu- Ca(NO3)2, for hydroponics) (in log scale).
lated based on the requirements of cultured fish for protein, lipids,
and energy. In this study, tilapia were fed a feed for carnivorous fish
(41.1%) and EP (37.7%) of the fish feed, which also had comparable
like trout, which has a higher protein content (42%) than the feed
levels of AD (18.7%) and GWP (26.8%) to fish meal and soybean
required by omnivorous fish (24e30%) (Avadí et al., 2015). High-
meal, respectively. The fish feed also includes 10% rice, whose
protein fish feed generally consists of a higher content of fish
production requires intensive pesticide and fertilizer uses in the
meal. However, due to fish depletion, fish meal is being replaced by
field (Nguyen-Van-Hung et al., 2019; Ramsden et al., 2017),
other animals (e.g., poultry by-products) or plant (e.g., soybean)
resulting in the higher terrestrial ecotoxicity of the aquaponics than
protein sources. The fish feed used in this study contains 20% fish
that of the hydroponics, as shown in Fig. S2. Therefore, the use of
meal, 20% poultry byproduct meal (meat and blood), and 20%
more environment-friendly protein source for fish feed, such as
soybean meal. As shown in Fig. 6a, animal-based ingredients
insects, is crucial for a more sustainable aquaponics.
caused higher environmental impacts than plant-based in-
As to the fertilizers, Ca(NO3)2 generated higher impacts than the
gredients. Poultry meat meal was the main contributor to the AP
 P. Chen et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 275 (2020) 122888 7

Fig. 6. Environmental profile of (a) fish feed (42% protein), and (b) HydroGro.

commercial HydroGro fertilizer mix (Fig. 5), which aligned with the
results of (Torrellas et al., 2012) that nitrogen fertilizer dominated
the environmental impacts of hydroponic tomato production. For
HydroGro, its phosphorus component (9.3% P2O5) was responsible
for the highest portion (48.1%) of the AP, and the potassium
component (35.0% K2O) contributed the most (44.3%) to its AD, as
shown in Fig. 6b. Despite the low content in HydroGro (4.3%), total
nitrogen showed dominating contributions to GWP (60.2%) and EP
(77.0%). This could be due to the nitrous oxide (N2O) emission
during fertilizer production (Hasler et al., 2015). Moreover, nitrogen
fertilizer has been identified as one of the major substances causing
eutrophication (Hasler et al., 2015).
3.3. Sensitivity analysis
3.3.1. Functional unit
All the environmental impacts reported above were calculated
using the economic value-based FU, which hence should highly
depend on the price of the produce. A sensitivity analysis was
conducted to evaluate the effect of price fluctuation on the envi-
ronmental performance of the aquaponic and hydroponic systems.
Table S4 shows the market prices of the vegetables over time from
June 2017 to April 2019 extracted from the USDA database
2017e2019 (USDA, 2019). Due to limited data, only one price point
was collected for arugula and tilapia. However, in the authors’ ex-
periences, their prices are fairly stable over time. Since all the
environmental impacts showed a similar trend, only the AD results
are presented here (Fig. 7a). The aquaponic system remained a
more sustainable system than the hydroponics regardless of the
produce price. Noticeably, the environmental impacts of the hy-
droponics were more sensitive to price fluctuation than those of the
aquaponics.
Since the results of life cycle impact assessment highly depend
on the FU defined, a separate LCA was carried out for comparison
8 P. Chen et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 275 (2020) 122888
Fig. 7. The effects of (a) produce price and (b) growing season on the AD of aquaponics or hydroponics. Min, Avg, and Max refer to the sum of the minimum, average, and maximum
prices of all the produces listed in Table S4.
using the mass-based FU of 1 kg of vegetables produced from the
systems. Table S5 (the first two rows) shows that the hydroponic
system still had a higher GWP than the aquaponic system by 46%,
but the difference was smaller than the economic value-based
result (Fig. 2). Different aquaponic systems are designed to grow
fish and vegetables at different ratios, which can directly affect the
results of the allocation of environmental impacts. On a mass basis,
Maucieri et al. (2018) allocated 91.6% of the environmental impacts
generated by an aquaponics over one month to vegetables, which is
higher than the current study (72%). It is important to point out that
our experiment was conducted at a research facility-scale, and both
systems were not operated under optimized conditions, therefore,
their environmental performance cannot be directly compared to
conventional OFA at commercial-scale. Bartzas et al. (2015)
compared the environmental impacts of hydroponics with OFA at
a research facility-scale in subtropical region (Italy), and found that
the former produced lower GWP and EP. The results indicate that in
addition to the advantages of high water and nutrient use effi-
ciency, CEA can have lower energy demand and associated envi-
ronmental impacts than OFA if operated in warm climate regions.
3.3.2. Region and season
The environmental performance of CEA is highly related to
geographic location, climate, and light period. Temperature control
and energy-consuming machinery in CEA ensure the high yield of
crops. In the Midwestern US, featured by long winter with drastic
temperature changes in a day, heating and supplemental lighting
throughout a day is necessary from October to April. Consequently,
both aquaponic and hydroponic production systems in the
temperate climate region require more energy, generated by elec-
tricity or propane than the regions with tropical and subtropical
climates. Table S5 summarizes the effect of region on the GWP of
1 kg of produce cultured in CEA system. Aquaponics in tropical
areas, e.g., US Virgin Islands (Boxman et al., 2017), produced 12
times less GWP than the current study. Furthermore, hydroponic
tomatoes grown in Columbia (Bojaca
et al., 2014) had 127 times less
GWP than those grown in northern Europe (Williams et al., 2006).
Seasonal change in temperature can also cause a significant
difference in the environmental performance of CEA. Representing
all the environmental impacts that had a similar trend, the AD
generated in winter season (December to February) was more than
twice as high as that in summer season for both the aquaponics and
hydroponics systems (Fig. 7b).
3.3.3. Energy source
Since our results indicated that energy consumption was the
environmental hotspot of both the aquaponic and hydroponic
systems, evaluating the environmental feasibility of different en-
ergy sources is needed. Fig. 8 compares the primary energy source
in Indiana (88% coal) with the US (30% coal, 34% gas) and California
(44% natural gas) scenarios (Freese, 2008). The results showed that
if the source of the electricity used for supplemental lighting and
greenhouse heating was changed from coal to natural gas, the EP of
the hydroponics would be lower than that of the aquaponics, while
the trends of the other environmental impacts remained un-
changed. Moreover, if the primary energy source was replaced by
renewable energy (wind power), the hydroponics would become
more sustainable than the aquaponics in terms of GWP, AP, and EP.
In this scenario, the mass-based GWP of the aquaponic system
(18.5 kg CO2 eq/kg of products) could be as low as that of com-
mercial aquaponics in tropical climate regions (US Virgin Islands,
8.64 kg CO2 eq/kg of products (Boxman et al., 2017)).
4. Conclusions
CEA is a surging technology to meet the rapidly growing global
food demand because of its high productivity, and water and
nutrient use efficiency. This is the first study to evaluate and
compare the cradle-to-gate environmental performance of hydro-
ponics and aquaponics operated with identical systems
 P. Chen et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 275 (2020) 122888
Fig. 8. Effect of energy source on the environmental impacts of aquaponics and hydroponics.
infrastructure via an economic-based LCA. Compared to hydro-
ponics, aquaponics produced nearly half the environmental im-
pacts due to the higher total value of its products. Due to the
temperate climate region and winter season, electricity use for
operations of greenhouse and both systems was the environmental
hotspot, in terms of AD, GWP, AP, and EP. However, the source of
energy played an important role, replacing fossil fuel by renewable
energy could make hydroponics a more sustainable system.
Furthermore, fish feed production was the second major contrib-
utor to the environmental impacts, except EP in which discharge of
nutrient solution from aquaponics played an important role.
Therefore, further assessment on the environmental feasibility of
alternative fish feeds for aquaponics is needed.
As sustainable production is one of the United Nation’s sus-
tainable development goals, our planet needs great efforts from
both farmers and consumers to mitigate the environmental bur-
dens associated with food supply chains. The LCA model developed
in this study is expected to provide CEA farmers in the Midwestern
US with a decision-making tool to adapt farming practices with a
lower environmental footprint, including energy source and feed
formula. In the long term, the results of this study also have prac-
tical implications for increasing Midwestern consumers’ awareness
of environmental issues of local CEA production, and guiding them
to purchase more environment-friendly CEA produce.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Peng Chen: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis,
Investigation, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Writing - re-
view & editing, Visualization. Gaotian Zhu: Conceptualization,
Methodology, Formal analysis, Investigation, Data curation, Writing
- original draft, Writing - review & editing, Visualization. Hye-Ji
9
Kim: Methodology, Resources, Data curation, Writing - review &
editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition. Paul B. Brown: Meth-
odology, Resources, Data curation, Writing - review & editing, Su-
pervision, Funding acquisition. Jen-Yi Huang: Conceptualization,
Methodology, Resources, Data curation, Writing - review & editing,
Visualization, Supervision, Project administration, Funding
acquisition.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing
financial interests or personal relationships that could have
appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the USDA National Institute of Food
and Agriculture, Hatch project 1014964, Hatch/Multi State project
NE-1335 Resource Management in Commercial Greenhouse Pro-
duction, and Purdue University Research Funds.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.122888.
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