Purpose

Bacterial cellulose (BC), obtained by fermentation, is an innovative and promising material with a broad spectrum of potential applications. Despite the increasing efforts towards its industrialization, a deeper understanding of the environmental impact related to the BC production process is still required. This work aimed at quantifying the environmental, health, and resource depletion impacts related to a production of BC.

Methods

An attributional life cycle assessment (LCA) was applied to a process design of production of BC, by static culture, following a cradle-to-gate approach. The LCA was modeled with GaBi Pro Software using the ReCiPe 2016 (H) methodology with environmental impact indicators at midpoint level. The functional unit was defined as 1 kg of BC (dry mass), in 138.8 kg of water.

Results

From the total used resources (38.9 ton/kg of BC), water is the main one (36.1 ton/kg of BC), most of which (98%) is returned to fresh waters after treatment. The production of raw materials consumed 17.8 ton of water/kg of BC, 13.8 ton/kg of BC of which was for the production of carton packaging, culture medium raw materials, and sodium hydroxide (for the washing of BC). The remaining consumed water was mainly for the fermentation (3.9 ton/kg) and downstream process (7.7 ton/kg). From the identified potential environmental impacts, the production of raw materials had the highest impact, mainly on “Climate change”, “Fossil depletion”, “Human toxicity, non-cancer”, and “Terrestrial toxicity”. The sodium dihydrogen phosphate production, used in the culture medium, showed the highest environmental impacts in “Human toxicity, non-cancer” and “Terrestrial ecotoxicity”, followed by corn syrup and carton production. The static culture fermentation and downstream process showed impact in “Climate change” and “Fossil depletion”.

Conclusions

Per se, the BC production process had a small contribution to the consumption of resources and environmental impact of the BC global life cycle.

中文翻译：

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细菌纤维素生产的生命周期评估

目的

通过发酵获得的细菌纤维素（BC）是一种创新且有前途的材料，具有广泛的潜在应用范围。尽管对其工业化作出了越来越大的努力，但仍然需要对与不列颠哥伦比亚省生产过程有关的环境影响有更深入的了解。这项工作旨在量化与生产不列颠哥伦比亚有关的环境，健康和资源耗竭影响。

方法

按照从摇篮到大门的方法，通过静态培养将归因生命周期评估（LCA）应用于生产BC的过程设计。使用ReCiPe 2016（H）方法和GaBi Pro软件对LCA进行建模，并在中点水平使用环境影响指标。将功能单位定义为在138.8千克水中的1千克BC（干物质）。

结果

从总使用资源（38.9吨/千克不列颠哥伦比亚省）中，水是主要资源（36.1吨/千克不列颠哥伦比亚省），其中大部分（98％）经过处理后返回淡水。原料生产消耗17.8吨水/千克BC，其中13.8吨/千克BC用于生产纸箱包装，培养基原料和氢氧化钠（用于BC洗涤）。剩余的消耗水主要用于发酵（3.9吨/千克）和下游过程（7.7吨/千克）。从已确定的潜在环境影响中，原材料的生产影响最大，主要是对“气候变化”，“化石耗竭”，“人类毒性，非癌症”和“陆地毒性”的影响。培养基中使用的磷酸二氢钠生产对“人类毒性，非癌症”和“陆地生态毒性”，其次是玉米糖浆和纸箱生产。静态培养发酵和下游过程显示出对“气候变化”和“化石耗竭”的影响。

结论

就其本身而言，卑诗省的生产过程对卑诗省全球生命周期的资源消耗和环境影响的贡献很小。