Environmental and Economic Assessment of Cow Manure Management in Halland, Sweden: Land Return, Biofuel, and Biochar
摘要
Managing cow manure is a great challenge for European countries such as Sweden, given the growth of livestock farming. Land return, biofuel, and biochar may be considered the three principal measures for cow manure management in recent years. However, a knowledge gap remains in understanding the environmental and economic impacts of these utilization methods in Sweden. To address this issue, this study assesses the environmental impacts and economic benefits of land return, biofuels, and biochar in Sweden. It employs a combination of life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC). The analysis was performed using SimaPro 9.0.0.48 software with the Ecoinvent 3 database, following the ISO 14040 and 14044 standards. The study focused on Halland, Sweden. The results showed that composted land return is the most promising technology for utilization of cow manure in Sweden, for its greatest potential for greenhouse gas emission reduction, i.e., −54.47 kg CO2 eq per ton of cow manure utilized, and relatively low cost, with a total cost of processing 1 tonne of cow manure is 940.04 SEK. The cow manure-to-biofuel deserves to achieve the lowest cost with a cost value per ton of cow manure of 666.58 SEK and GHG reduction potential being −10.73 kg CO2-eq per ton of cow manure. Biochar has the highest total cost and high GHG emissions. The latter is mainly due to studies that fail to account for biochar’s potential to sequester soil carbon.