Life cycle assessment of greenhouse gas emissions of feedlot manure management practices: Land application versus gasification

Animal waste is an important source of anthropogenic GHG emissions, and in most cases, manure is managed by land application. Nevertheless, due to the huge amounts of manure produced annually, alternative manure management practices have been proposed, one of which is gasification, aimed to convert manure into clean energy-syngas. Syngas can be utilized to provide energy or power. At the same time, the byproduct of gasification, biochar, can be transported back to fields as a soil amendment. Environmental impacts are crucial in selecting the appropriate manure strategy. Therefore, GHG emissions during manure management systems (land application and gasification) were evaluated and compared by life cycle assessment (LCA) in our study. LCA is a universally accepted tool to determine GHG emissions associated with every stage of a system. Results showed that the net GHG emissions in land application scenario and gasification scenario were 119 and -643 kg CO2-eq for one tonne of dry feedlot manure, respectively. Moreover, sensitive factors in the gasification scenario were efficiency of the biomass integrated gasification combined cycle (BIGCC) system and energy source of avoided electricity generation. Overall, due to the environmental effects of syngas and biochar, gasification of feedlot manure is a much more promising technique as a way to reduce GHG emissions than is land application.