Life cycle assessment of decentralized mobile production systems for pelletizing logging residues under Nordic conditions

The development of mobile systems for the decentralized pelletizing of forest-based residual biomass is currently underway. However, there is a lack of knowledge regarding the environmental impacts of such systems that needs to be developed for correct judgements on the most sustainable developing paths. The objective of this study was to quantify and compare the environmental impacts of a decentralized mobile production system for pelletizing logging residues in Northern Sweden operating at either the forest landing or forest terminal from a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) perspective.The results showed that the landing- and terminal-based scenarios showed similar environmental profiles. The pelleting, transportation and drying stages of both scenarios were identified as environmental hotspots. These production stages accounted for 62%, 14% and 14% of the total greenhouse gas emissions, respectively. Key factors influencing the system were the use of electricity at terminals, the increase in pelletizer capacity, and long transportation distances. The use of a Swedish electricity mix instead of diesel based electricity in the terminal-based scenario reduced all of the environmental impacts by between 68% and 83%, with the exception of fresh water eutrophication potential, which increased by 26%.In conclusion, our findings indicate that an electrified mobile pellet production system with high operational efficiency and situated at a terminal close to the harvesting sites could, from an LCA point of view, be an interesting option for pelletizing Nordic logging residues, especially in regions with long transportation distances to industry. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.