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.
The Italian olive-growing sector has to face both the growing competition on the international olive oil market and the shift of the common agricultural policy (CAP) from market and price policies ...towards direct aids decoupled from production. In addition the olive growers, as other farmers, have to comply with stricter obligations to manage their farms in sustainable ways (cross compliance). In this scenario the sector needs new competitive strategies to address these new challenges. In this paper we assess if innovative olive-growing models, like the high trees density orchards, are able to reduce production costs without worsening environmental sustainability. Indeed the intensive olive systems produce higher yields within a few years of planting and allow a higher level of mechanization (pruning and harvesting) but they could generate higher environmental impacts. In this study we perform an environmental and economic assessment of two olive-growing systems: the “High Density” (HDO) and the “Super High Density” (SHDO). The analysis integrates the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and the Life Cycle Costing (LCC) methods by using a common database. The environmental analysis carried out through LCA has shown a better performance of the HDO system for all the impact categories, due to a lower use of energy and chemical inputs and to higher olive yields. Also from an economic point of view the HDO could be considered more convenient than the SHDO: in fact, despite the lower operating costs of the latter due to the complete mechanization of pruning and harvesting operations, these costs are counterbalanced by higher initial investment costs that the company has to face which are three times those of the HDO system. The total result is that the Net Present Value is better for the HDO for each olive price level. This result is mainly driven by lower plantation costs, longer production cycle, higher production of olives and higher efficiency in the use of inputs which characterize the HDO model.
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.
The cylindrical drift chamber is the most innovative part of the MEG II detector, the upgraded version of the MEG experiment. The MEG II chamber differs from the MEG one because it is a single volume ...cylindrical structure, instead of a segmented one, chosen to improve its resolutions and efficiency in detecting low energy positrons from muon decays at rest. In this paper, we show the characteristics and performances of this fundamental part of the MEG II apparatus and we discuss the impact of its higher resolution and efficiency on the sensitivity of the MEG II experiment. Because of its innovative structure and high quality resolution and efficiency the MEG II cylindrical drift chamber will be a cornerstone in the development of an ideal tracking detector for future positron-electron collider machines.
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.
Display omitted
•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.
In the Kyoto Protocol the absence of Green House Gases (GHGs) commitments of developing countries (non-Annex I) and the more flexible terms of implementation which are allowed to countries shifting ...toward a market economy (transition economies) naturally lead to the absence or to less constraining national measures and policies of reduction of the GHGs emissions which, in turn, may determine a comparative advantage in the production of the highest energy/carbon intensive commodities for these countries. These arguments are valid also considering the future implementation of the European Emission Allowance Trading Scheme (EATS). Thus, developing countries may become a haven for the production of not environmental-friendly commodities; in this case, the so-called Pollution Haven Hypothesis, stating that due to freer international trade the comparative advantage may change the economic structure and consequently the trade patterns of the countries linked by trade relationships, could occur. This would lead to the increase of the transfers of energy and carbon embodied in traded commodities from developing countries and transition economies toward Kyoto or EATS constrained countries.
The aim of this paper is to verify if for Italy, as a Kyoto and EATS complying country, evidence of a change in the trade patterns, occurred on the basis of the Pollution Haven Hypothesis, does exist and to estimate the magnitude of the under-estimation of the carbon actually emitted: the carbon leakage.
The Input–Output model has been used to calculate the intensities of energy consumption and the related Green House Gases emission, for each Italian economic sector.
IDEA (Innovative Detector for Electron–positron Accelerators) is a detector concept designed for a future leptonic collider operating as a Higgs factory. It is based on innovative detector ...technologies developed over years of R&D. In September 2018, prototypes of the proposed sub-detectors have been tested for the first time on a beam line at CERN. The preliminary results from this test of a full slice of the IDEA detector and standalone measurements of dual read-out calorimeter prototypes are presented.
The Mu2e experiment at Fermilab searches for the charged-lepton flavor violating (CLFV) conversion of a negative muon into an electron in the field of an aluminum nucleus, with a distinctive ...signature of a monoenergetic electron of energy slightly below the muon rest mass (104.967 MeV). The Mu2e goal is to improve by four orders of magnitude the search sensitivity with respect to the previous experiments. Any observation of a CLFV signal will be a clear indication of new physics. The Mu2e detector is composed of a tracker, an electromagnetic calorimeter, and an external veto for cosmic rays surrounding the solenoid. The calorimeter plays an important role in providing particle identification capabilities, a fast online trigger filter, a seed for track reconstruction while working in vacuum, in the presence of 1-T axial magnetic field and in a harsh radiation environment. The calorimeter requirements are to provide a large acceptance for 100-MeV electrons and reach at these energies: 1) a time resolution better than 0.5 ns; 2) an energy resolution <10%; and 3) a position resolution of 1 cm. The calorimeter design consists of two disks, each one made of 674-undoped cesium iodine crystals read by two large area arrays of UV-extended silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs). We report here the construction and the test of the Module-0 prototype. The Module-0 has been exposed to an electron beam in the energy range around 100 MeV at the Beam Test Facility in Frascati. Preliminary results of timing and energy resolution at normal incidence are shown. A discussion of the technical aspects of the calorimeter engineering is also reported in this paper.
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