Environmental impact assessment of feedstock production and upstream processing

This report investigates the environmental impacts of feedstock production and upstream processing, as regards the STAR-ProBio case studies. The feedstocks considered for the production of the case studies are fermentable sugars from sugar beet pulp, maize grain and maize stover. Fermentable sugars (e.g. glucose) are interesting renewable materials to produce a variety of bio-products, for instance, polylactic acid (PLA) and polybutylene succinate (PBS). Maize grain is a starch-rich crop, which goes through an enzymatic hydrolysis process to obtain glucose. On the other hand, sugar beet pulp and maize stover are abundant in ligno-hemicellulose, which is transformed into a variety of sugars (glucose, xylose, arabinose, galactose…) by first carrying out a pretreatment process and then, enzymatic hydrolysis.