Improving Eco-efficiency of crude palm oil production process using life cycle assessment

Abstract Previous research in Crude Palm Oil (CPO) industry in Indonesia focused on added value of waste from CPO production and assessment of environmental impacts caused by CPO production. There has been no research that analyzes environmental impact from CPO production waste processing and eco-efficiency analysis of CPO production. CPO production waste can be palm oil mill liquid waste (POME) and palm oil fuel ash (POFA). Purpose of this study are to examine the potential for reducing environmental impacts and increasing the eco-efficiency index (EEI) from waste processing in the CPO production. This study used life cycle assessment (LCA) method. From LCA analysis, its known that there are 3 largest impacts categories from this study, namely carbon footprint, ecotoxicity-freshwater and eutrophication. The gate-to-gate process from the existing conditions of CPO processing has an EEI of 0.95. This value is included in the affordable and not sustainable category. The scenario of processing POME waste into liquid organic fertilizer can increase the EEI to 5.10, this score included in the affordable and sustainable category.