Environmental Sustainability Assessment of Banana Peel Briquetting

Abstract Continued population growth is expected to further strain the energy-food nexus, such as the increase of waste generation by 2050. Proper waste management is thus essential to manage the future scenarios. Banana is one of the highly produced crops globally, and especially in the Philippines, where one of its most notable wastes are the banana peels. It is estimated that 1.67 million metric tons of banana peel waste is generated from banana production in the Philippines. Despite the potential of BP across other applications, these technologies are not yet implemented on an industrial scale. While their potential as a raw material for various products has been researched extensively, the environmental sustainability of these technologies is yet to be measured. One of the technologies for utilizing waste biomass is briquetting. Briquettes are processed densified biomass which can be used as a substitute for conventional solid fuels, especially in household cooking. This study aims to report for the first time the environmental performance of industrial-scale banana peel briquetting from collected empirical data. Life cycle assessment is conducted through openLCA with ReCiPe 2016 Midpoint (H) being the impact assessment method. The results indicate that the production of briquetting performs better environmentally compared to the equivalent production of charcoal. The carbon footprint of producing briquettes from banana peels is 0.01 kg CO2-eq/MJ, over 95% lower than conventional charcoal. The briquettes from banana peels also indicate lower environmental impacts in categories such as agricultural land occupation, and fossil depletion potential. Contribution analysis of the system indicates that the use of binder contributes most to the impacts of briquetting production. Possible use of different binders or the development of different binders is expected to improve environmental performance. Alternative energy schemes for drying can also improve environmental performance.