The Institute of Technology and Business in České Budějovice, Okružní 517/10, 370 01, České Budějovice, Czech Republic.
Sci Eng Ethics. 2018 Aug;24(4):1331-1338. doi: 10.1007/s11948-017-9925-z. Epub 2017 Jun 8.
The trend of emerging biorefineries is to process the harvest as efficiently as possible and without any waste. From the most valuable phytomass, refined medicines, enzymes, dyes and other special reactants are created. Functional foods, food ingredients, oils, alcohol, solvents, plastics, fillers and a wide variety of other chemical products follow. After being treated with nutrient recovery techniques (for fertilizer production), biofuels or soil improvers are produced from the leftovers. Economic optimization algorithms have confirmed that such complex biorefineries can be financially viable only when a high degree of feedstock concentration is included. Because the plant material is extremely voluminous before processing, the farming intensity of special plants increases in the nearest vicinity of agglomerations where the biorefineries are built for logistical reasons. Interdisciplinary analyses revealed that these optimization measures lead to significantly increased pollen levels in neighbouring urban areas and subsequently an increased risk of allergies, respectively costs to the national health system. A new moral dilemma between the shareholder's profit and public interest was uncovered and subjected to disputation.
新兴生物炼制厂的趋势是尽可能高效地处理收获物，避免任何浪费。从最有价值的植物生物质中，可以制造出精制药物、酶、染料和其他特殊反应物。功能性食品、食品成分、油、酒精、溶剂、塑料、填料和各种各样的其他化学产品紧随其后。用过营养回收技术（用于生产肥料）处理后，剩余物可以生产生物燃料或土壤改良剂。经济优化算法已经证实，只有当高度集中原料时，这种复杂的生物炼制厂才具有经济可行性。因为在加工之前，植物材料的体积非常大，所以出于物流原因，在生物炼制厂附近的聚居区，特殊植物的耕作强度会增加。跨学科分析表明，这些优化措施会导致邻近城市地区花粉水平显著上升，进而导致过敏风险增加，分别给国家卫生系统带来成本。在股东利润和公共利益之间发现了一个新的道德困境，并对此进行了争论。
