Identificação do perfil ambiental por meio da avaliação do ciclo de vida da circularidade dos finos de carvão vegetal na produção de briquetes

Abstract

Charcoal production in Brazil reaches an average of five million tons annually. Despite being an economically viable activity, it has some environmental liabilities such as air pollution (CO2, Nox, among others.) and generation of charcoal fines residue resulting from loading, transport, storage and screening of the material, since the friability is one of the characteristics of this product. The non-utilization of this waste causes environmental impact as well as economic losses. One way to add value to this waste is the transformation into briquettes, considering that they have approximately 60% of the calorific value of charcoal, therefore suitable for use as fuel in industrial facilities and domestic uses. Given the above, it is important to identify opportunities for improving environmental performance arising from the production of briquettes from eucalyptus charcoal fines, through the Life Cycle Assessment. To this end, the recommendations contained in the standards NBR 14040 and 14044 were followed. The inventory was prepared from the survey of primary data from a company producing briquettes located in the Campos Gerais region of Paraná, complemented with data from the literature. The results allowed to obtain the process mapping, material and resources mass balance. The drying process in the production of charcoal fines briquette (BFCV) dominated most of the impact categories, except for ozone depletion, particulate matter, water shortage, freshwater aquatic eutrophication and marine aquatic eutrophication, which were dominated by the briquetting process. Overall, the scenarios evaluated showed an expressive reduction in the environmental load on BFCV production in the categories as the electricity-dependent processes, one of the most significant hotspots, were removed. The scenario of the Briquette Production Unit near the charcoal plant with the use of gases for drying the BFCV predominated as the one with the lowest environmental impact among the alternatives analyzed.