ELECTRICITY PRODUCTION

VIA ANAEROBIC DIGESTION

OF MAIZE STRAW
Contents of This Homework:
The mission of this homework is to evaluate the environmental impact of electricity production via anaerobic
digestion of maize straw.

I will use the software openLCA, an opensource software for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Sustainability
Assessment, developed since 2006 by GreenDelta.

What is LCA?
Life-cycle assessment or life cycle assessment (LCA, also known as life-cycle analysis) is a methodology for
assessing environmental impacts associated with all the stages of the life-cycle of a commercial product, process,
or service. An LCA study involves a thorough inventory of the energy and materials that are required across the
industry value chain of the product, process or service, and calculates the corresponding emissions to the
environment. LCA thus assesses cumulative potential environmental impacts. The aim is to document and
improve the overall environmental profile of the product.
Required FLOWS

Database
Define all flows involved. Every flow has a specific type and reference.

Elements PROCESSES
Define every process in the analysis, with its input and output flows.

PRODUCT SYSTEMS
Define the product system. A product system contains all processes under
study. The product system can consist of one process only or a network of
multiple processes and is defined by the reference process.
In openLCA the impacts can be calculate for a product system. The
reference process of the product system is used to calculate the impacts for
all connected upstream processes of the product system.

PROJECT
The project can be used to compare the impacts of different product
systems.
Table of
Contents 01 INPUT HOMEWORK DATA

02 PRODUCT SYSTEM OVERVIEW

with all flows and processes

03 COMPUTATION OF
ENVIROMENTAL IMPACTS
of created product system
INPUT
HOMEWORK
DATA
 About Maize
Maize is one of the world’s most widely
produced and consumed cereal crops.

Maize straw/stover normally consists of

variable proportions of the leaves, stalks,
and cobs of maize plants left in a field after
harvest.
Flows in electricity production from Anaerobic
digestion of maize straw
Inventory analysis for 30 kWh electricity
production from biogas
PRODUCT
SYSTEM
OVERVIEW
 Process

‘’MAIZE CULTIVATION’’ ‘’MAIZE STRAW SILAGE’’ ‘‘ELECTRICITY PRODUCTION’’

‘’Input’’ ‘’Output’’ ‘’Input’’ ‘’Output’’ ‘’Input’’ ‘’Output’’

Maize seed Maize production Maize production Maize straw stored Maize straw stored Energy produced

Phosphorous fertiliser Diesel Methane

Urea Transport in t*km Sodium hydroxide

Pesticide Electricity

Diesel Nitrogen oxides

Potassium fertiiser Carbon monoxide

Ammonium fertiliser Carbon dioxide

Ammonium nitrate Sulfur dioxide

Nitrogen oxide Diesel

Nitrogen
Product flow

Product System
COMPUTATION
OF
ENVIROMENTAL
IMPACTS
LCIA selected categories of environmental
impacts
LCIA product system results
LCIA single indicator results
LCIA single indicator results
END
OF
PRESENTATION

Thank
you!