Department of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Production, Landscape, Agroenergy, Università degli Studi di Milano, Via G. Celoria 2, 20133 Milan, Italy.
Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Via Brecce Bianche 10, 60131 Ancona, Italy.
Sci Total Environ. 2015 Sep 1;526:88-97. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2015.04.069. Epub 2015 Apr 26.
Tomato processing involves a significant production of residues, mainly constituted by discarded tomatoes, skins, seeds and pulp. Often, these residues are not valorized and represent an added cost for manufacturing companies because of disposal processes, with environmental issues due to the difficult management. The exploitation of these residual materials results complex as their availability is mainly concentrated in few months. A possible solution is the production of biogas employed in a Combine Heat and Power engine for energy production, in line with the 2020 targets of European Union in terms of promotion of energy from renewable resources and greenhouse gas emission reduction. The tomato by-product utilization for energy production as a strategy to reduce the environmental load of tomato purée was evaluated by means of Life Cycle Assessment. Two scenarios were considered: Baseline Scenario - tomato by-products are sent back to the tomato fields as organic fertilizers; Alternative Scenario - tomato by-products are employed in a nearby biogas plant for energy production. Methane production of tomato by-products was assessed by means of specific laboratory tests. The comparison between the two scenarios highlighted reductions for all the impact categories with the Alternative Scenario. The most important reductions are related to particulate matter (-5.3%), climate change (-6.4%) and ozone depletion (-13.4%). Although small, the reduction of the environmental impact cannot be neglected; for example for climate change, the anaerobic digestion of by-products allows a saving of GHG emissions that, over the whole year, is equal to 1.567 tons of CO2 eq. The results of this study could be up-scaled to the food industries with high heat demand producing considerable amounts of fermentable by-products employable as feedstock for biogas production.
番茄加工过程会产生大量的副产物，主要由废弃的番茄、果皮、种子和果肉组成。通常情况下，这些副产物没有得到充分利用，而且由于处理过程，给制造企业增加了成本，同时由于难以管理，还带来了环境问题。这些剩余材料的利用是复杂的，因为它们的可用性主要集中在几个月内。一种可能的解决方案是生产沼气，用于联合热电联产发动机以生产能源，这符合欧盟 2020 年促进可再生能源和减少温室气体排放的目标。通过生命周期评估评估了将番茄副产物用于能源生产作为减少番茄泥环境负荷的策略。考虑了两种情况：基线情景-番茄副产物作为有机肥料返回番茄田；替代情景-番茄副产物在附近的沼气厂用于能源生产。通过特定的实验室测试评估了番茄副产物的甲烷产量。两种情况下的比较表明，替代情景下所有影响类别都有所减少。最重要的减少与颗粒物（-5.3%）、气候变化（-6.4%）和臭氧消耗（-13.4%）有关。尽管减少幅度很小，但不能忽视对环境的影响的减少；例如，对于气候变化，副产物的厌氧消化可以节省温室气体排放，全年相当于 1.567 吨二氧化碳当量。本研究的结果可以扩展到具有高热需求的食品工业，这些工业生产大量可用于沼气生产的可发酵副产物。
