The biodiversity impacts associated with palm oil make continued unsustainable cultivation incompatible with sustainable development goals and ambitions for climate change impact reduction. Given the prevalence of palm oil in consumer products, as global population increases, the development of any alternative must be scalable, robust and sustainable. The application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in order to evaluate new technology is increasing, with the emergence of ‘anticipatory’ methods for understanding the potential impacts of new chemistry and production processes when moving from laboratory to pilot-scale. Presented is a novel microbial lipid production process using yeast Metschnikowia pulcherrima grown with a waste lignocellulosic feedstock. Microwave technology is used as an energy efficient method of breaking down the biomass to fermentable material. This work combines anticipatory LCA methods and techno-economic analysis to evaluate how a bio-refinery system based on this process can be both environmentally and economically sustainable. It shows how by-product utilisation and microwave process integration can reduce manufacturing cost from &gt;$5000 per tonne lipid to become comparable with palm oil at &lt;$1000 per tonne lipid. Environmental impacts associated with the process can be reduced through on-site energy generation and energy efficient biomass hydrolysis, with multi-objective optimisation used to ensure the most sustainable production route is determined. Overall, this work shows the important role that anticipatory modelling has in directing sustainable product development.

Beyond palm oil: Anticipatory environmental and techno-economic modelling for a bio-refinery process producing future food, fuels and high-value chemicals using green chemistry techniques

255th National Meeting (2018)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.