As part of the global effort to transform our way of living to a sustainable one, we face the challenge of making new materials which are not harmful to the environment nor the whole ecosystem, popularly described today as sustainable materials. The advanced method today to assess the impact of the materials on the environment is by making a comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA) of it, considering the needed resources to produce the material, and the outcome of it at the end of use. We wish the material to fit to the same demands as the common materials we used today, thus referring only to the use phase of the product. We now face two additional demands: 1) low embodied energy (EE) and low embodied carbon (EC) (meaning low CO2eq during the production of the material) - the pre-use phase of the product. 2) recyclability of the product or biodegradability- the post-use phase of the product. Fungal mycelium materials have the potential to answer the above demands and to integrate into our daily life as an alternative to different kinds of materials (packaging, construction, meatless meat, textiles). In order to investigate the impact of it on the environment a comprehensive life cycle analysis was done, simulating a small-scale factory of such materials, from cradle to gate (meaning the pre-use phase of the product). As a part of the analysis there is a need to assess the metabolic carbon emissions, the CO2 emissions as a result of the fungal growth. This was an unknown and challenging parameter to measure. During this research a simple method to calculate this value was developed, allowing to calculate the CO2 emissions by only the weight loss of a sample. Comparing the final EE and EC to different commercial materials emphasizes the benefits of myco-materials and may be used to stimulate the industry in to invest more in this direction.

LCA of fungal mycelium materials

ACS Spring 2022

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