LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT OF BRIQUETTE PRODUCTION FROM RICE STRAW AND ITS UTILIZATION AS A FUEL FOR ELECTRICITY GENERATION

The objective in this research was to study life cycle assessment (LCA) of rice straw briquette production. The comparison of the environmental problem in term of global warming aspect, midpoint impacts, and endpoint impacts of electricity generation using different fuel was also investigated. The environmental problem in term of global warming aspect was examined with IPCC 2013 GWP 100a methods. Meanwhile, midpoint impacts contributing to environmental problem and endpoint impacts or damages, related to human health, ecosystem health, and resource availability, were analyzed by using IMPACT 2002+ method. From the rice straw briquette production, there were two main steps: a raw material acquisition step and a manufacturing step. It revealed that the manufacturing step had a significantly 71.17% greater potential for global warming aspect than the acquiring raw materials step. This was because of the 4 sub-steps found in the manufacturing step, including reducing the size of rice straw, converting rice straw into charcoal, mixing, and drying. They required more energy and chemical compounds. Specifically, the sub-step of converting rice straw into charcoal through thermal decomposition at the temperature of 400°C under air-free condition that needed high energy consumption resulting in the 74.50% greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which was the highest amount and inorganic particle formation that caused the damages to human and ecosystem health. In addition, co-firing of rice straw briquettes with lignite coal in 1:1 ratio for generating 1 MW electricity had 16.43% and 49.15% lower possibility of environmental problems: global warming and acidification problem (ADP), respectively than that those firing lignite coal. Those also affect to the damages attributing to climate change, human health, and ecosystem quality.