From the sowing stage to incineration

This is where the work of Sandra Belboom, a teaching assistant in the Department of Applied Chemistry at the University of Liege, comes in. In her recent doctoral thesis (2), the young researcher wanted to pursue as far as possible – that is to say, from the most reliable data available at the current time- an analysis of the environmental impacts of the production of bioethanol and bioplastics. “My ultimate objective consisted of identifying the best possible use of bioethanol according to the type of raw material used. To do this, I used the “Life Cycle Assessment”, (LCA). Standardised by the ISO and guided by the European Union, this tool has the advantage of taking into account the entire life cycle of a product from the planting and cultivation of the plant concerned to the end product (for example incineration if it concerns a bioplastic), this includes factors such as transportation and transformation etc.”. 

The researcher modeled around fifteen different scenarios based on three elements: raw materials (wheat, sugar beet and sugar cane), the place of growth and transformation (Europe- more precisely Belgium and the Ukraine- on one hand, and Brazil on the other), and finally, the type of use of bioethanol (biofuel or bioplastics).  “The choice of Brazil was imposed by the fact that this country has a long tradition of sugar cane growing and because it has an important production capacity for the two types of use. In addition, given the growing demand for biofuels across the world, the countries of Europe could turn to this country in the future for the importation of finished products”. The choice of Belgium is an obvious one, to the extent that the European objective for biofuel use consists of maximizing the use of local resources and reducing the importation of raw materials to encourage increased energy independence. In addition, there is a sizeable amount of robust and reliable field information that has been validated by experts who were consulted by Sandra Belboom both at Gembloux Agro Bio Tech and at the Belgian Beet Research Institute (IRBAB). The choice of Ukraine was justified by the wish to compare the situation in Belgium with a European agricultural region reputed to have enormous areas of croplands but having low yields. 

Apart from a review of the abundant international literature relative to bioethanol (3), the work of Sandra Belboom has consisted in modeling the environmental impact of the principal stages of bioethanol production: planting, transportation of crops to the factory, transformation into hydrated bioethanol, the conversion of the latter into fuel or bioplastic and the end of life. Particular emphasis was placed on land use change, whether directly (for example, the transformation of a forest or grassland into crops grown for energy) or indirectly (shifting crops to other soils leading to land use change).  What emerges from this?  “From the perspective of greenhouse gas emissions and the exhaustion of fossil fuels, without taking account of direct and indirect land use changes, both the bioplastics sector and the biofuels sector are more advantageous than the traditional sectors (Editor’s note : that is to say fuels from fossil resources), and this applies regardless of what raw material is used (4). With regard to the bioplastics sector, high-density polyethylene (HDPE) produced from sugar cane is the most advantageous, despite the constraint of transporting this product from Brazil to Belgium. This is directly followed by the HDPE from Belgian crops. Among the latter, sugar beet is ahead of wheat because it makes it possible to produce more bioplastics per unit of surface area. On the other hand, if we take account of land use changes, local crops- in this case wheat and sugar beet- are to be preferred to sugar cane and crops grown in the Ukraine”.

(2) “Assessing the environmental impact of bioethanol production from sugar cane, sugar beet or wheat by life cycle assessment. A comparison of the uses of biofuel and bioplastics.” 
(3) The literature on the bioplastics sector, which is quite new, is much more limited than the literature on biofuels.
(4) In this situation, we do not take into account the changes on international markets which could result from a decision to favor the production of plastic on a grand scale.