Life cycle assessment of maize cultivation and biomass utilization in northern Thailand

Maize, a major food source for the world, is a high-yield commodity crop, and one of five major crops in Thailand. Occupying about 33% of the Thai upland farmlands, maize farming has been growing tremendously especially in northern Thailand. However, after harvesting, open burning is widely used in...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2020-02, Vol.10 (1), p.3516, Article 3516
Main Authors: Supasri, Titaporn, Itsubo, Norihiro, Gheewala, Shabbir H., Sampattagul, Sate
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
639/166
692/499
704/844
Agricultural economics
Agricultural land
Agricultural practices
Air pollution
Biomass
Biomass energy
Burning
Corn
Crop Production
Crop residues
Crops, Agricultural - growth & development
Cultivation
Environmental impact
Environmental performance
Farming
Food sources
Government agencies
Heat
Humanities and Social Sciences
Life cycle analysis
Life cycles
Local communities
multidisciplinary
Oil
Oils & fats
Open burning
Petroleum production
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Thailand
Zea mays - growth & development
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Maize, a major food source for the world, is a high-yield commodity crop, and one of five major crops in Thailand. Occupying about 33% of the Thai upland farmlands, maize farming has been growing tremendously especially in northern Thailand. However, after harvesting, open burning is widely used in order to get rid of maize cobs and husks in land preparation for the next period. The current maize farming practices have caused several problems to local communities as well as urban dwellers. The objectives of this research were: (i) to analyze the life cycle inventory of maize cultivation, maize cob pellet production and heavy fuel oil production in northern Thailand using IDEA v2.0 and ecoinvent v3.0 databases; (ii) to evaluate environmental impacts of maize cultivation, maize cob pellet production and heavy fuel oil production using A Global Scale Environmental Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LIME-3) with the results of weighting (Country-specific) based on monetary valuation of end-points. This study evaluated the life cycle environmental impacts of maize cultivation and continuing through biomass energy production from maize cob by comparing with heat production from heavy fuel oil in Mae Chaem and Chiang Dao districts in the north of Thailand by using two different databases, IDEA v2.0 and ecoinvent v3.0 with an endpoint-based life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method (LIME-3). The system boundary of this study includes land preparation, planting, weeding, farming, harvesting, maize cob pellet production and heat production from maize cob pellet and heavy fuel oil. The units of analysis in this study are 1 kg of maize grain, 3.76E-03 MJ of biomass energy production from maize cob and 3.76E-03 MJ of heat production from heavy fuel oil, respectively. The data were obtained from field survey supplemented with the Thai National Life Cycle Inventory Database and other scientific publications. The results included the environmental impacts of maize cultivation and continuing through biomass energy production from maize cob by comparing with heat production from heavy fuel oil in Mae Chaem and Chiang Dao districts by using two different databases with LCIA method on the endpoint approaches (LIME-3). The total damage cost based on IDEA v2.0 life cycle inventory (LCI) database in Mae Chaem and Chiang Dao districts was about 4.64E-01 USD and 4.89E-01 USD, respectively. As regards ecoinvent v3.0 database, the total damage cost in Mae Chaem and Chiang Dao districts
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-020-60532-2