Catalán Eva, Komilis Dimitrios, Sánchez Antoni
Composting Research Group, Department of Chemical, Biological and Environmental Engineering, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
Waste Manag Res. 2017 Jul;35(7):786-790. doi: 10.1177/0734242X17709909. Epub 2017 May 31.
One of the wastes associated with leather production in tannery industries is the hair residue generated during the dehairing process. Hair wastes are mainly dumped or managed through composting but recent studies propose the treatment of hair wastes through solid-state fermentation (SSF) to obtain proteases and compost. These enzymes are suitable for its use in an enzymatic dehairing process, as an alternative to the current chemical dehairing process. In the present work, two different scenarios for the valorization of the hair waste are proposed and assessed by means of life-cycle assessment: composting and SSF for protease production. Detailed data on hair waste composting and on SSF protease production are gathered from previous studies performed by our research group and from a literature survey. Background inventory data are mainly based on Ecoinvent version 3 from software SimaPro® 8. The main aim of this study was to identify which process results in the highest environmental impact. The SSF process was found to have lower environmental impacts than composting, due to the fact that the enzyme use in the dehairing process prevents the use of chemicals traditionally used in the dehairing process. This permits to reformulate an industrial process from the classical approach of waste management to a novel alternative based on circular economy.
制革行业皮革生产过程中产生的一种废弃物是脱毛过程中产生的毛发残渣。毛发废弃物主要通过倾倒或堆肥处理，但最近的研究提出通过固态发酵（SSF）处理毛发废弃物以获得蛋白酶和堆肥。这些酶适用于酶法脱毛工艺，可替代目前的化学脱毛工艺。在本研究中，通过生命周期评估提出并评估了两种不同的毛发废弃物增值利用方案：堆肥和用于生产蛋白酶的固态发酵。关于毛发废弃物堆肥和固态发酵生产蛋白酶的详细数据来自我们研究小组之前进行的研究以及文献调查。背景清单数据主要基于软件SimaPro® 8中的Ecoinvent第3版。本研究的主要目的是确定哪种工艺对环境的影响最大。结果发现，固态发酵工艺对环境的影响比堆肥小，这是因为脱毛过程中使用酶避免了传统脱毛过程中使用的化学物质。这使得工业生产过程可以从传统的废物管理方式转变为基于循环经济的新型替代方式。
