Pelletizing compost derived from agricultural by-products: an economic and environmental assessment

This paper presents a comparative Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) study of traditional compost derived from agricultural by-products and pelletized compost, to assess whether substantial di ff er- ences occur in terms of environmental impacts and costs. Indeed, the production of compost for fertilizing soil has demonstrated several agronomic, economic and environ- mental bene fi ts, but it also shows some critical issues related to storage, handling, and transportation. These problems could be overcome by the pelletization process. One of the main novelties of this manuscript is represented by the se- lection of a proper functional unit (FU), which corresponds to the carbon content, instead of the more common mass-based FU. Overall, results showed better environmental perfor- mance of the pellet over the compost; LCC also demonstrated that pellets are an economically comparable alternative.