Life cycle inventory data for ethyl levulinate production from Colombian rice straw

This data article is associated with the research article Sus-tainable production of ethyl levulinate by levulinic acid es-terification obtained from Colombian rice straw. This pa-per shows the methodology to calculate the Life Cycle In-ventory (LCI) of the foreground system to perform the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the ethyl levulinate (EL) produc-tion from Colombian rice straw (RS). This process encom-passes two main stages: (i) RS production (involving culti-vation and harvesting) and (ii) EL production (involving acid hydrolysis, levulinic acid (LA) purification, and El production). On one hand, foreground data related to paddy rice cultiva-tion was gathered from the literature review. Besides, emis-sions of the cultivation stage were calculated using the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) methodology. The SQCB (Sustainable Quick Check for Biofuels) methodol-ogy was used to calculate NH3, NOx, N2O and NO3 emissions, whereas the SALCA (Swiss Agricultural Life Cycle Assess-ment) model was used to calculate phosphorous emissions to water. The Turc method was employed to calculate the ir-rigation requirements based on the rainfall and agrological features of rice culture. On the other hand, foreground data related to RS conversion to EL within a biorefinery scheme was obtained from simulation using Aspen Plus v.12. Lastly, background data associated with raw materials, catalysts, and utilities were gathered from Ecoinvent database. All the in-ventories are meaningful to carry out future environmental assessments involving sustainable production processes using RS as raw material or biorefinery processes using dilute acid hydrolysis.(c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc.This is an open access article under the CC BY license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )

Automated summary

This data article presents the methodology and data collection process for the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of ethyl levulinate (EL) production from Colombian rice straw. It provides meaningful inventories and foreground data for future environmental assessments of sustainable production processes using rice straw as a raw material or biorefinery processes.