Evaluación de la sustentabilidad del aprovechamiento del bagazo de caña de azúcar en el Valle del Cauca – Colombia a partir del análisis de ciclo vida

Abstract

The sustainability of the use of sugar cane bagasse in the Valle del Cauca Colombia was evaluated. For this purpose a diagnosis of the current situation, where relevant information on environmental, economic and social variables were collected was performed. Then the methodology of Life Cycle Analysis LCA to use two current processes that are energy cogeneration and paper production, as a tool for environmental evaluation was applied. For this purpose the respective mass and energy balances were developed by unitary system processes, then the environmental assessment was performed with specialized software SIMAPRO, where six categories of impact were analyzed. It was found that the unit processes that generate greater environmental impacts are the boiler in the case of cogeneration energy and pulp bleaching in the case of paper production. To reach the assessment of sustainability, methodologies Cost Analysis Life Cycle LCC and stakeholders Analysis, assessing the economic and social dimensions were applied respectively. Finally the results of the three dimensions were integrated: Environmental with ACV, Economic with LCC and social with stakeholder analysis using the methodology Analytic Hierarchy Process AHP which concluded that is more sustainable utilization of bagasse for the production of paper for the production steam and sustainability recommendations were given.