Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats analysis of carbon footprint indicator and derived recommendations

ABSTRACT: Demand for a low carbon footprint may be a key factor in stimulating innovation, while prompting politicians to promote sustainable consumption. However, the variety of methodological approaches and techniques used to quantify life-cycle emissions prevents their successful and widespread implementation. This study aims to offer recommendations for researchers, policymakers and practitioners seeking to achieve a more consistent approach for carbon footprint analysis. This assessment is made on the basis of a comprehensive Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats or SWOT Analysis of the carbon footprint indicator. It is carried out bringing together the collective experience from the Carbonfeel Project following the Delphi technique principles. The results include the detailed SWOT Analysis from which specific recommendations to cope with the threats and the weaknesses are identified. In particular, results highlight the importance of the integrated approach to combine organizational and product carbon footprinting in order to achieve a more standardized and consistent approach. These recommendations can therefore serve to pave the way for the development of new, specific and highly-detailed guidelines

Biological conversion of carbon monoxide: rich syngas or waste gases to bioethanol

Bioconversion of syngas/waste gas components to produce ethanol appears to be a promising alternative compared to the existing chemical techniques. Recently, several laboratory-scale studies have demonstrated the use of acetogens that have the ability to convert various syngas components (CO, CO2, and H2) to multicarbon compounds, such as acetate, butyrate, butanol, lactate, and ethanol, in which ethanol is often produced as a minor end-product. This bioconversion process has several advantages, such as its high specificity, the fact that it does not require a highly specific H2/CO ratio, and that biocatalysts are less susceptible to metal poisoning. Furthermore, this process occurs under mild temperature and pressure and does not require any costly pre-treatment of the feed gas or costly metal catalysts, making the process superior over the conventional chemical catalytic conversion process. The main challenge faced for commercializing this technology is the poor aqueous solubility of the gaseous substrates (mainly CO and H2). In this paper, a critical review of CO-rich gas fermentation to produce ethanol has been analyzed systematically and published results have been compared. Special emphasis has been given to understand the microbial aspects of the conversion process, by highlighting the role of different micro-organisms used, pathways, and parameters affecting the bioconversion. An analysis of the process fundamentals of various bioreactors used for the biological conversion of CO-rich gases, mainly syngas to ethanol, has been made and reported in this paper. Various challenges faced by the syngas fermentation process for commercialization and future research requirements are also discussed