In recent years, the demand for biofuels has been growing exponentially, as has the interest in biodiesel produced from organic matrices. Particularly interesting, due to its economic and ...environmental advantages, is the use of the lipids present in sewage sludge as a raw material for the synthesis of biodiesel. The possible processes of this biodiesel synthesis, starting from lipid matter, are represented by the conventional process with sulfuric acid, by the process with aluminium chloride hexahydrate and by processes that use solid catalysts such as those consisting of mixed metal oxides, functionalized halloysites, mesoporous perovskite and functionalized silicas. In literature there are numerous Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies concerning biodiesel production systems, but not many studies consider processes that start from sewage sludge and that use solid catalysts. In addition, no LCA studies were reported on solid acid catalysts nor on those based on mixed metal oxides which present some precious advantages, over the homogeneous analogous ones, such as higher recyclability, prevention of foams and corrosion phenomena, and an easier separation and purification of biodiesel product. This research work reports the results of a comparative LCA study applied to a system that uses a solvent free pilot plant for the extraction and transformation of lipids from sewage sludge via seven different scenarios that differ in the type of catalyst used. The biodiesel synthesis scenario using aluminium chloride hexahydrate as catalyst has the best environmental profile. Biodiesel synthesis scenarios using solid catalysts are worse due to higher methanol consumption which requires higher electricity consumption. The worst scenario is the one using functionalized halloysites. Further future developments of the research require the passage from the pilot scale to the industrial scale in order to obtain environmental results to be used for a more reliable comparison with the literature data.
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•LCA of seven biodiesel synthesis scenarios starting from WWTS•Comparison of conventional production systems with those using solid catalysts•Electricity consumption and production of solid catalysts are the hot spots of the systems.•The aluminium chloride hexahydrate scenario has the best environmental profile.•The scenario based on ZnO@HNT-TAAI halloysites has the worst environmental profile.
Purpose
For the development of any life cycle assessment study, the practitioner frequently integrates primary data collected on-field, with background data taken from various life cycle inventory ...databases which are part of most commercial LCA software packages. However, such data is often not generally applicable to all product systems since, especially concerning the agri-food sector, available datasets may not be fully representative of the site specificity of the food product under examination. In this context, the present work investigates the background, sources and methodological aspects that characterise the most known commercial databases containing agri-food data, with a focus on four agri-food supply chains (olive oil, wine, wheat products and citrus fruit), which represent an important asset for the Italian food sector.
Methods
Specifically, the paper entails a review of currently available LCI databases and their datasets with a twofold scope: firstly, to understand how agri-food data is modelled in these databases for a coherent and consistent representation of regional scenarios and to verify whether they are also suitable for the Italian context and, secondly, to identify and analyse useful and relevant methodological approaches implemented in the existing LCI databases when regional data are modelled.
Results
Based on the aforementioned review, it is possible to highlight some problems which may arise when developing an LCI pertaining to the four Italian agri-food supply chains, namely:
1. The need for specific inventory datasets to tackle the specificities of agri-food product systems.
2. The lack of datasets, within the existing DBs, related to the Italian context and to the abovementioned supply chains. In fact, at present, in the currently available LCI DBs, there are very few (or in some cases none) datasets related to Italian wine, olive oil, wheat-based products and citrus fruit. The few available datasets often contain some data related to the Italian context but also approximate data with that of product systems representing other countries.
Furthermore, the present study allowed to identify and discuss the main aspects to be used as starting elements for modelling regional data to be included in a future Italian LCI database of the abovementioned four supply chains.
Conclusions
The results of the present study represent a starting point for the collection of data and its organisation, in order to develop an Italian LCI agri-food database with datasets which are representative of the regional specificities of four agri-food supply chains which play an important role in the Italian economy.
Italy is one of the major world cherry producers and over a third of its production takes place in the Apulian Region. This study aims to quantify and evaluate the environmental sustainability of the ...lifecycle of cherry production and transformation in the Apulia region in southern Italy. The paper presents the results of a pilot study commissioned by an Apulian consortium of cherry producers. The purpose is that of identifying the main hotspots of the implemented production practices and suggesting options for environmental improvement.
A Life Cycle Assessment approach is used for the quantification of the potential environmental impacts of cherry production. The lifecycle stages included in the study follow the cradle-to-gate approach, considering the agricultural processes, transports and the transformation system, which gives three types of intermediate products for the food manufacturing industry, namely cherries in SO2, cherries in alcohol and destoned cherries in alcohol. A comparison of the environmental profile of the different cherry products has been carried out and possible alternative scenarios evaluated.
The assessment results show that, for most impact categories, as in many other agri-food systems, the agricultural lifecycle phase is environmentally more burdening compared to the transformation phase.
As regards the finished products, the cherry in SO2 system has a better environmental profile compared to that of the cherries in alcohol. For instance, the GWP, referred to the whole life cycle (including the agricultural, transport and processing phases), amounted to 556.1 kg CO2eq t−1 cherries in alcohol, 725.7 kg CO2eq t−1 cherries destoned in alcohol, 298.9 kg CO2eq t−1 cherries in SO2. For the cherry in alcohol system, part of the hydro-alcoholic solution is reused in the transformation process. This contribution has been evaluated and compared with the scenario without recycling of alcohol.
The results of the research indicate that different environmental improvements could be achieved for this cherry production system by reducing on-orchard emissions, focusing on the key contributors of energy and fertilisers-related emissions, by implementing more efficient transportation and by the recycling some of the solutions (such as the hydro-alcoholic one) in the industrial phase.
Abstract
Within the framework of the Extended Partnership "Economic-Financial Sustainability of Systems and Territories" (GRINS Project Spoke 1, WP3), this work proposes a regional estimate of the ...amount of enteric methane produced by cattle raised in the Italian territory. These data will be used to create national and regional datasets that will be an integral part of the AMELIA platform and will be freely available for use by both public and private managers for environmental impact assessments in the livestock sector. To this purpose, the IPCC (level 2) provides statistical models capable of evaluating this parameter, considering population, daily weight gain, animal weight, type of breeding, and dietary intake for each considered breed. In particular, in the calculation of enteric emissions, 37 pure breeds with different attitudes (milk, meat, and dual-purpose) have been considered, whose population is significant (>1%) at the national and/or regional level. For each individual breed, six classes have been considered, considering age and gender of the cattle. In addition, 22 crossbred breeds have been added, 21 specifics to each region and one at the national level. Regional emissions have been estimated by considering the average population of each breed in the period 2019-2022, normalizing the contributions of the individual species in a delimited territory and/or geographic area. In this way, six contributions have been calculated for each Italian region, representing a statistical assessment of the emissions that will subsequently be confirmed in the field through direct measurements using innovative instrumental technologies. Overall, this analysis offers a comprehensive view of how regional factors, and the composition of cattle breeds can impact greenhouse gas emissions. These findings provide valuable guidance for advancing sustainability initiatives within the agricultural sector.
Abstract
The Project of Significant National Interest (PRIN, 2017) entitled: "Italian Life Cycle Inventory Database of Agri-Food Products" (ILCIDAF), financed by the Ministry of University and ...Research, aims to promote the sustainability of the agri-food sector through the development of a database on a national and regional scale for some food chains that are significant for the Italian economy The objective is to create datasets for the Italian agri-food sector which current existing databases do not provide. Specifically, datasets that are geographically, temporally and technologically representative of the Italian national territory were developed. The selected supply chains are: bread and pasta, wine, olive oil and citrus fruits respectively studied by four scientific units: the Universities of Bari, Chieti-Pescara, Messina and Reggio Calabria respectively. The database is constructed considering the entire supply chain of the indicated foodstuffs. The University of Bari, to which the authors of this work belong to, has previously provided contributions on the agricultural phase of wheat, the milling phase and the pasta-making phase. In this work, on the other hand, the phases of the bread-making process of durum and soft wheat bread are described. The aim of this study is to construct datasets relating to the transformation phase of the indicated end products. In particular, 5 datasets were constructed: two relating to bread made from soft wheat flour, 2 with durum wheat semolina and 1 with wholemeal durum wheat semolina. The data was acquired through information provided by the companies in the sector (field data) through the completion of appropriately drafted questionnaires and company reports. In addition, the same analysed and processed were compared with data available in scientific literature.
Abstract
A petrographic and geochemical study of several volcanic millstones, representative of 119 artifacts found in the ancient Greek colony of Megara Hyblaea (Sicily Island) and recording the ...grinding device evolution from the Archaic to the Hellenistic period, unravelled the volcanoes involved as quarrying and production areas. This was possible also through the comparison with available petrographic and geochemical literature data of ancient volcanic millstones found in the whole Mediterranean. Saddle querns, hopper-rubber, rotary Morgantina- and Delian-type millstones of Megara Hyblaea consist of lithotypes belonging to five magmatic series: Tholeiitic, Na-Alkaline, Tholeiitic Transitional, Calcalkaline and High-K Alkaline. A provenance from the Eastern Sicily, i.e. mugearites from Etna and basalts and basaltic andesites from the Hyblaean Mountains were recognized for all the four investigated grinding devices. By contrast, a sea-trade is involved for several saddle querns made of calcalkaline basaltic andesites and andesites lavas (Aegean Islands) and two Morgantina-type millstones consisting of a calcalkaline rhyodacite ignimbrite from the quarrying site of Mulargia (Sardinia). A wide millstone trade, both local (Eastern Sicily) or maritime (Central-Eastern Mediterranean) was thus constrained through six centuries, from the foundation of the Greek colony up to the destruction of the settlement at the end of third century BCE. Finally, Vulture Volcano (southern Italian peninsula) is the most probable candidate for the only leucite- and haüyne-bearing phonolite of the High-K Alkaline Series.
Solid waste landfills are responsible for much of the anthropogenic methane emitted from the waste sector. The quantification of fugitive CH4 emissions from a landfill is to date characterised by ...high uncertainty and several methodologies have been devised to estimate emission fluxes. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs, also known as drones) are revolutionising the way CH4 emission monitoring is conceived and offer new opportunities for quantifying emission fluxes from a landfill, mainly due to recent advances in sensor miniaturisation that make these instruments lighter and more suitable to be equipped on a drone. The paper analyses publications from the period 2014–2024 that illustrate UAV-based methods that can be used for this purpose, identifying experiences in the field and the current state of research.
The review has highlighted a current research status characterised by a strong experimental focus, with few tests carried out in landfills under real emission conditions (33 % of the reviewed papers). Since 2018, there has been a growing interest in open-path sensors, tested in some controlled-release experiments according to different configurations which have given promising results, but experiences are limited and there are no experiments conducted directly in landfills. In general, the UAV-based methods identified by this systematic review are characterised by unclear uncertainties. Drones are a viable alternative to traditional monitoring methods at landfills and allow data to be acquired with a spatial and temporal resolution that can hardly be achieved by other low-cost methods. However, further studies and field trials are needed to better understand methodological aspects: especially the uncertainty of each step in the quantification process need to be properly analysed and quantified more precisely.
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•Methane emissions from landfills are characterised by high uncertainty.•Drones can be any viable solution to the issue, due to the continuous miniaturisation of methane detection sensors.•The paper provides a review of UAV-based approaches to quantify CH4 emissions from landfills.•The use of drones to quantify methane emissions from landfills is still not sufficiently explored.•UAV-based methods can quantify CH4 emissions quickly and economically.
Volcanic rocks were among the most sought-after materials to produce grinding tools in antiquity because lavas lithologies, either mafic or felsic, ensured good wear resistance and grinding capacity ...with respect to many other kinds of rocks. The interest in findings made of vesciculated lavas, referable to parts of querns, mortars, and/or pestles of the Final Bronze Age site of Monte Croce Guardia (Arcevia) lies in the fact that this settlement was built upon limestones belonging to the sedimentary sequence of the Marche-Umbria Apennines (central Italy) and far away from potential raw materials of volcanic rocks. A petrologic study of 23 grinding tool fragments clearly indicates a provenance from the volcanic provinces of central Italy: Latium and Tuscany Regions. Few leucite tephrites (5) and one leucite phonolite lavas have a clear magmatic affinity with the high-K series of the Roman Volcanic Province (Latium) whereas the most abundant volcanic lithotype (17 samples) is represented by shoshonites (K-series) whose thin section texture, modal mineralogy and major-trace elements contents closely match with the shoshonite lavas from the Radicofani volcanic centre in the Tuscan Magmatic Province. At Radicofani (a volcanic neck in the eastern sector of Tuscany) a Final Bronze Age site coeval to that of Arcevia is present and a potential pathway corridor from that site towards Arcevia (air-line distance of ca. 115 km) is dotted with many settlements of the same age. Through analytical algorithms based on the slope and the different human-dependent cost-functions which can be applied to determine non-isotropic accumulated cost surface, least-cost paths and least-cost corridors, the best route from Radicofani to Monte Croce Guardia, approximately 140 km long, was simulated, with a walking time of 25-30 h, possibly using pack animals and wheel chariots. Three thousand years ago the Apennine Mountains did not thus constitute a barrier for human movements. This study also shed light on some other possible patterns of interactions between Final Bronze Age communities of central Italy through the present-day regions of Tuscany, Umbria and Marche, aimed towards the best performance of strategic economic activities at that time such as that of the transformation of cereals, and accompanied to cultural and social reasons.
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