Nutrient Recovery as an Added Benefit to Harvests of Photosynthetic Marine Biomass
Time: Mon 2019-10-28 14.00
Location: F3, Lindstedtsvägen 26, Stockholm (English)
Subject area: Industrial Ecology
Doctoral student: Joseph Pechsiri , Hållbar utveckling, miljövetenskap och teknik
Opponent: Professor Angela Wulff, Göteborg University
Supervisor: Associate Professor Fredrik Gröndahl, Hållbar utveckling, miljövetenskap och teknik; Associate Professor Maria Malmström, Hållbar utveckling, miljövetenskap och teknik
Abstract
As a result of increasing environmental burdens from anthropogenic activities andresource scarcity, interest for the development of solutions utilizing photosyntheticmarine biomass has also been increasing in both academia and industries. Medium tolarge scale production and harvest of photosynthetic marine biomass have beenpracticed to achieve numerous services, including improving tourism industries,production of biofuels, and production of food/feed. However, few studies haveevaluated the potential for nutrient recovery as an added benefit to the aforementionedservices and the potential environmental burdens of such solutions from a holisticsystems perspective. This thesis, therefore, sought to determine the nutrient recoverypotential of harvesting photosynthetic marine biomass at industrial scales whileassessing the environmental burdens from a holistic systems perspective. Techniquesinvolving life cycle inventory and analysis, input-output analysis, growth modellingand experimentation, energy analysis, and assessment of greenhouse gas emissionsfrom a life cycle perspective were used to assess the potential environmental burdensof large scale harvest of photosynthetic marine biomass.This study employed five real world case studies of five different photosynthetic marinebiomass species at various geographical locations across the globe. Each case wasassessed to determine the potential to recover nutrients while evaluating the potentialenvironmental burdens from an energy and greenhouse gas perspective. Each casecontains unique specific details and therefore methods applied were case specific.Results showed that nutrient recovery potential existed in most cases with the exceptionof one case. Cases evaluated for their potential environmental burdens showed thatlarge scale harvest of photosynthetic marine biomass is resource intensive regardless ofspecies but showed mixed results from an energy perspective. The key findings of thisthesis were that a) the potential for nutrient recovery was estimated in both large scalecultivation and large scale wild harvest of photosynthetic marine biomass, b) from anenergy and biomass harvesting perspective, the viability of industrial harvests ofphotosynthetic marine biomass were found for both large scale cultivations and wildharvesting of biomass blooms, and c) scale of operations is an important factor towardsevaluating the environmental performance of photosynthetic marine biomassproduction systems.