On Tuesday, May 19th, during the afternoon session (17:30 – 18:30 CEST), the consortium partner Politecnico di Torino presented a poster titled: “Multifunctionality approach in biorefinery Life cycle assessment: the GoodByO case study” (Session Reference: 2AV.5, Poster 2AV.5.10).
Methodological Focus: Biorefinery Multifunctionality
The study, authored by F. Barracco, K. Z. Kabeh, M. Prussi, and D. Chiaramonti, is as part of a broader work section aiming to perform the environmental and techno-economical assessment of the proposed process. The GoodByO process consists of an integrated biorefinery; generally, integrated biorefineries are able to convert biomass feedstocks into multiple products, ranging from biofuels and energy to chemicals, posing a challenge in defining the functional unit of the study but also in defining a proper approach to the process multifunctionality. The present work thus aims at identifying the best approach for the GoodByO process multifunctionality, based on existing literature debate and addressing specific characteristics and novelty of the GoodByO process. In particular, three different allocation approaches to multifunctionality were addressed: economic allocation, mass allocation, and hybrid mass-energy allocation and each approach results were discussed.