Life Cycle Assessment of pelletized compost from agricultural waste valorization processes

In the context of agricultural waste management, the production of compost to fertilize the soil is a practice that presents benefits from both a technical-economic and an environmental point of view.However, the use of compost shows relevant issues related to storage, handling, and relocation.Pelletization is a promising technique to overcome such problems: thanks to low water content the pelletized compost avoids the formation of mold and possible contamination by pathogenic microorganisms, as well as the development of bad odor.Along with the reduction in volume, these aspects make long-distance transport and storage possible, whereas untreated compost is preferably used in the same place where it is produced.In the present study, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was carried out to evaluate the benefits given by the pelletizing treatment of compost obtained from leafy agro-waste compared to the direct use of the compost on-site.The fertilizing value has been taken as the functional unit (FU), instead of a mass-based FU, and the results showed better environmental performance of the pellet over the compost.Energy consumption optimization scenarios were also evaluated through a sensitivity analysis, which showed the possibility to further improve the environmental results of the pellets.