International Journal of Environmental Science and Development

Abstract—The objective of this research was to investigate and compare the cradle-to-grave environmental impacts of five ratios of carbonized briquettes obtained from rain tree (Samanea saman) residues and coffee grounds/tea waste and traditional waste management including landfill disposal and composting. The SimaPro 8.0.5.13 software was used for life cycle assessment analysis. The results were grouped into six impact categories: acidification, eutrophication, global warming, ozone layer depletion, human toxicity and photochemical oxidation. The results showed that carbonization and briquetting processes were the main source of global warming, ozone layer depletion and photochemical oxidation due to the pollutants emitted from an electric briquetting machine and the diesel fuel used for carbonization. Composting rain tree residues had the lowest impact on global warming at 0.02%. Conversely, the carbonized briquette obtained from coffee grounds/tea waste had the highest impact on global warming at 21.57%. This impact resulted from the high amount of electricity used for briquetting and the diesel fuel used for carbonization. On the other hand, composting rain tree residues had the highest impact on acidification and eutrophication with 90.01% and 82.85%, respectively, due to utilization of the compost for soil amendment. Thus, carbonized briquettes from rain tree residues and coffee grounds/tea waste were an alternative way to reduce waste to landfill and to add value to biomass residues for use as raw materials for producing fuel products.

Index Terms—Life cycle assessment, carbonized briquette, rain tree, coffee ground/tea waste.

Chaisuwan N. and Kansai N. were with the Department of Environmental Science, Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand (e-mail: nichakorn.c@hotmail.com, yung_ZzAa@hotmail.com).
Supakata N. is with the Department of Environmental Science, Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand (corresponding author; e-mail: nuta.s@chula.ac.th).
Papong S. is with the National Metal and Materials Technology Center, Pathum Thani, Thailand (e-mail: seksanp@mtec.or.th).

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Cite: Chaisuwan N., Kansai N., Supakata N., and Papong S., "The Comparison of Environmental Impacts of Carbonized Briquettes from Rain Tree Residues and Coffee Grounds/Tea Waste and Traditional Waste Management," International Journal of Environmental Science and Development vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 48-53, 2020.

Copyright © 2020 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).