Techno-economic and life cycle assessments of anaerobic digestion - A review

Techno-economic analysis and life cycle assessments are crucial for any processes to be sustainable using the tri-fold metrics including technical feasibility, economic viability, and environmental sustainability. Anaerobic digestion is portrayed as one of the mature technologies for handling solid waste management and bioenergy generation. Nonetheless, a clear assessment of the tri-fold sustainability metrics is not available yet and this review attempts to address this knowledge gap. Important problems in techno-economic analysis and life cycle assessments such as assumptions used, extrapolation of research data, robustness and reproducibility of results, the openness of materials were discussed. Anaerobic digestion helps in treating organic wastes that could be used for different purposes including electricity, vehicle fuel, natural gas substituent, heating, and cooking fuel. However, sustainability in terms of technology, economics and environment remains the question for it to be industrialized.