University of the Punjab Conference Portal, 2nd International Conference on Engineering Sciences

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Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of Sugar Industries using Process Practical Sensitivity Analysis: An Environmental Chain Analysis of Pakistan Sugar Industries
Zaman Sajid, Farooq Sher

Last modified: 2015-11-20

Abstract


Ever since, the Industrial revolution began about 150 years ago, man-made activities have added substantial amounts of greenhouse gases (GHGs) to the atmosphere. An increase in GHGs has an impact on the world's climate leading to the phenomenon known as global warming. Industries account for more than one-third of all the types of energy used in the world. The sugar industry is one of the leading industries in Pakistan, which also plays vital role in the country's economy. In sugar industry, different types of by-products or wastes such as molasses, filter cake, bagasse and ash are produced along with sugar. For optimum utilization of such wastes, some of these are used as input resource in other plants like power plant and distillery. The emissions from sugar industry directly or indirectly impact the environment. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a very significant tool for the environmental impact analysis of a product. This technique is very beneficial in the valuation of energy usage and environmental load by a production process. To analyze the emissions from the sugar industry and life cycle energy usage, a complete life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed. The material and energy consumption of a typical sugar production plant in Pakistan were studied in details. Since, different units in a sugar plant contribute to different levels of environmental impacts; LCA for each unit of sugar plant was carried out. A model was developed to analyse environmental load on each unit. The results revealed the units, which contribute the most, and the least towards environmental impacts. A sensitivity analysis was helpful in ordering the different production units, according to their contributions towards environmental damage. A general affinity of results is clearly in the favour of optimum utilization of waste produced in the sugar industry.