Techno-economic Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment of Value-added Products from Agri-food Waste

Abstract

The growing attention to a circular economy in the last decade motivates the promotion of strategies for moving from “take, make, and dispose of” to “rethink, reuse, and recovery” to face the climate change crisis. In this framework, the biorefinery concept is considered a sustainable approach for generating multiple bio-based products from different biomass feedstocks through the arrangement of conversion technologies. However, addressing economic and environmental aspects at an early stage of the design of bio-based systems is required for their potential implementation. This chapter aims to present the state of the art of application of techno-economic analysis (TEA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) for evaluating valorisation pathways of agri-food waste into value-added products under a biorefinery perspective. A great number of articles analysed only focused on the global warming category in the environmental assessment; meanwhile, economic analysis was related to conventional performance indicators, such as minimum sale price, payback time, and profit, among others. Furthermore, process simulation was a widely used tool in the design and identification of the optimal valorisation strategy based on economic and environmental feasibility.