The Use of Life Cycle Assessment for the Characterization of the Energy and Environmental Sustainability of a Biochar Production Process: The Case Study of the Nera Biochar™ Plant (Turin, Italy)

The analysis carried out in this work made it possible to evaluate the environmental and energy performances of a biochar production process, which has been active for some years now at the Nera Biochar™ company (Turin, Italy). Through the application of the Life Cycle Assessment methodology, all product impacts were quantified. The plant under study produces biochar, distillate, and syngas through a biomass pyrolysis process. The first is used as a soil improver and has the peculiarity of presenting a very high porosity and specific surface, which makes it suitable for carbon storage; the second is used as an invigorating agent for plants; the latter is used entirely to produce the heat necessary for the pyrolizer. Being a plant explicitly designed for maximizing the production and quality of biochar, this product, unlike others on the market, has very high purity characteristics, such as making it compatible with human and animal nutrition. The analysis was carried out using the OpenLCA open-source software developed by GreenDelta; some SimaPro databases were used for secondary data. The “from cradle-to-gate” approach was followed, thus excluding the “downstream” phases relating to the final use of the products. The choice of the functional unit fell on 1000 L of biochar bagged in 1000 L big bags and 1000 L of distillate in 1000 L tanks. The CML-IA baseline was chosen as a method for assessing environmental impacts. For each impact category considered, the “cradle-to-gate” analysis highlighted mainly positive results; for example, referring to the global warming potential, related to the production of 1000 L of biochar in a big bag and 1000 L of distillate in a tank, positive values corresponding to 1.895 × 103 and 2.421 × 104 kg CO2 eq were obtained, respectively. Changes to the production process are hypothesized to improve the environmental impacts of the process itself.