Life Cycle Assessment of Cellulose Encapsulated Essential Oils as Pesticide and Preservative Alternatives

Cellulose, a natural and biodegradable polymer, is finding use as an encapsulation agent for essential oils (EOs) used for food preservation and as a natural pesticide. Here, we evaluate the environmental performance of cellulose encapsulated EOs as alternatives to a commercial pesticide (pyridazine) and preservative (propionic acid) using life cycle assessment (LCA). A cradle-to-gate model of a scaled process that uses cellulose from agricultural residues to encapsulate EOs was evaluated via the ReCiPe 2016 midpoint life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) metrics for climate change impact, fossil resource scarcity and human and ecosystem toxicity. The encapsulated EOs were compared with functionally equivalent quantities of pesticide and preservative expected for application in crop production and food preservation, based on their minimum inhibitory concentrations. Results showed that the encapsulated EOs can significantly lower impacts when used as a pesticide substitute for pyridazine but have comparable or higher impacts if substituting for the preservative propionic acid for all impact categories. To investigate how the LCA results would be affected by variations in process parameters (i.e. energy input) and bridge the limitations of this LCA, of a scale-up process, we varied energy input by +/-10%, which resulted with a minor change in all metrics studied. This LCA finds environmental and resource saving benefits of applying cellulose encapsulated EOs compared to commercial pesticides used in agriculture, which could be extended to food and cosmetic preservation through process optimization.