Carbon footprint of sugar produced from sugarcane in eastern Thailand
M. Yuttitham a,b, Shabbir H. Gheewala a,b, A. Chidthaisong a,b,*
a The Joint Graduate School of Energy and Environment, King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi, 126 Pracha-Uthit Rd., Bangkok 10140, Thailand
b Science and Technology Postgraduate Education and Research Development Office (PERDO), Commission on Higher Education (CHE), Ministry of Education, Thailand
a b s t r a c t
Carbon footprint (CFP) of sugar produced from sugarcane in eastern Thailand was estimated from greenhouse gas emissions (CO2, CH4, and N2O) during the sugarcane cultivation and milling process. The use of fossil fuels, chemical and organic fertilizer and sugarcane biomass data during cultivation were collected from field surveys, questionnaires and interviews. Sugar mill emissions, fossil fuel utilization and greenhouse gas emission from wastewater treatments were included. The results show that sugar production has a carbon footprint of 0.55 kg CO2e kg1 sugar. This carbon footprint was a sum of 0.49 kg CO2e kg1 sugar from sugarcane cultivation and 0.06 kg CO2e kg1 sugar from the milling process. For the cultivation part, most of the GHGs emissions were from fertilizer, fossil fuel use and biomass burning. The CFP in eastern Thailand is sensitive to the type of data selected for calculation and of variations of farm inputs during sugarcane cultivation. There was no significant difference of CFP among farm sizes, although small farms tended to give a relatively higher CFP than that of medium and large farms.
Keywords:
Carbon footprint
Sugarcane cultivation
Sugar mill
Greenhouse gas emissions
Eastern Thailand
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 4 January 2011
Received in revised form
25 July 2011
Accepted 25 July 2011
Available online 30 July 2011
