LCA Food 2012 in Saint Malo, France! - Manifestations et colloques ...

PARALLEL SESSION 6A: TOOLS AND DATABASES 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
metalurgical coke production. Using a US electrical grid and excluding the ammonia coproduct CO2, these
process emissions are 0.6 kg CO2/kg glyphosate, which corresponds to 6% of the total CO2e emissions (10.3
kg CO2e/kg glyphosate). Thus the transformation to gobal warming potential impact assessment had little
effect, but involves more variability).
4. Discussion and Conclusions
Glyphosate production was modelled using the Monsanto route from diethanolamine. Cradle to gate energy
analysis shows cumulative energy demands (all manufacturing plus energy equivalent of the fossil resources
used to build the glyphosate molecule) of 181 MJ HHV/kg using mass allocation for all processes.
When zero burdens were allocation to the CO2, slag and fuel gas byproducts of ammonia and phosphorus,
the cumulative energy demand was 235 MJ HHV/kg. This compares to cumulative energy demands of 406
and 226 MJ LHV/kg, for the ecoinvent models 2.1 (Green, 1987) and 2.2 (Sutter, 2010). The more recent
ecoinvent model is based on a different chemistry starting from glycine. Despite the similar in cumulative
energy demand result, there are some significant differences between the model presented here, and that in
ecoinvent. However, the results produced by the design method for this paper are fast, inexpensive, and
provide extreme transparency.
In glyphosate production, the cradle-to-gate process emissions of CO2 were 6% of the global warming
impact. A more detailed life cycle inventory and impact assessment can be obtained from the authors. The
detailed analysis and documentation produced on this project represents an important change in our understanding
of the life cycle of glyphosate, cyhalofop-butyl, dazomet, and chloropicrin. In the case of glyphosate,
this new dataset models an important commercial production route, includes the chemical emissions
from reaction by-products, and achieves a level of transparency that other LCI data suppliers should strive
for.
5. References
BCPC, 2010. The Pesticide Manual, 14th edition, see www.pesticidemanual.com for details.
Bryant, R.B., 2003. Specialty Chemicals Magazine,http://www.agranova.co.uk/pdf/RJB_ChemSpec2003.pdf
Green, M. B., 1987. Energy in pesticide manufacture, distribution and use. In: Helsel Z.R. (ed.) Energy in Plant Nutrition and Pest
Control, Energy in World Agriculture Vol. 2: 165-177.
Green, M., A. McCulloch, 2007. Energy considerations in the use of herbicides, J.Sci. Fd Agric, 27:95-100
Jimenez-Gonzalez, C. ,Overcash, M., 2000. Energy sub-modules applied in life cycle inventory of processes, J. Clean Products and
Processes, 2, 57-66.
Overcash, M., Overcash, M. Evolving concepts in life cycle analyses, chapter in Cleaner Technologies and Cleaner Products for
Sustainable Development, NATO ASI Series, Springer-Verlag, New York, NY, p 455-470, 1995.
Sutter, J., 2010. Life cycle inventories of pesticides, Swiss Centre for Life Cycle Inventories, St. Gallen
Unger, T.A., 1996. Pesticide synthesis handbook, Noyes, New Jersey.
USEPA, 2011. Pesticides Industry Sales and Usage, 2006 and 2007 Market Estimates, Prepared by Grube, A., Donaldson, D., Kiely,
T., and Wu, L., United States Environmental Protection Agency.
Green, S, and Pohanish, R.P. (2005) Sittig’s Handbook of Pesticides and Agricultural Chemicals, William Andrew Publishing.
R & M (2001) Research and Markets report accessed online
http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reportinfo.asp?report_id=1082203&t=d&cat_id=
Woodburn, A.T. (2000) “Glyphosate: production, pricing and use worldwide,” Pest Management Science 56, pp 309-312.
Yin, G. (2011). Glyphosate: There Is No Substitute, url:
http://www.farmchemicalsinternational.com/cropprotection/productfocus/?storyid=2997
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