Investigation of energy consumption system and environmental pollutants in the spinach (Spinacia oleracea) production process through life cycle assessment method

ABSTRACT

In order to evaluate the flow of energy and also environmental emissions in the production of spinach (Spinacia oleracea), this study was conducted in the crop year 2020-2021. The information required for this study was collected using random sampling method from 90 farms in Isfahan, Iran through observation and questionnaire. The finding indicated that the total energy, output and energy ratio in terms of one hectare of production were 4279 MJ/ha, 3154 MJ/ha and 1.02, respectively. The electricity used to run the irrigation pumps had the highest energy consumption among the available inputs (1544 MJ.ha⁻¹). The Center of environmental science (CML₂) method was used to identify the most important environmental effects during the cultivation period and 10 environmental impacts were calculated in three factors of classification, normalization and weighting. Based on this, emissions related to manure consumption were determined the main emissions. Direct emissions from combustion of diesel and manure (spinach) was determined as the main hotspot in human toxicity (HT) and eutrification (EU). Based on the normalization results, marine aquatic (MAE), freshwater aquatic (FAET) and acidification (AC) had the highest values among the impact categories with 20.4E-09, 3.61E-09 and 1.99E-09, respectively. Finally in the present study, the environmental impacts index was estimated as 14.24 nPt.ha⁻¹. The share of DE and IDE to the total emissions were 18.55% and 81.45%, respectively. Results indicated that the use of modern irrigation systems (sprinklers) and efficient irrigation pumps are methods of reducing electricity.

KEYWORDS:

• Energy
• environmental impacts
• spinach crop
• yield

Acknowledgement

This study is conducted at department of Mechanical Engineering of Biosystems, Faculty of Agriculture, Shahrekord University, Iran. The financial support provided by this university. We would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for very helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Consent to participate

Authors of the paper consent to participate in the paper.

Data availability statement

Author elects to not share data: Research data are not shared.

Authors’ contributions

Amin Lotfalian Dehkordi: Writing, conceptualization, resources, data curation.

Ashkan Farsi: Visualization, supervision, project administration.

Amin Lotfalian Dehkordi: Writing (review and editing).

Ashkan Farsi: resources, Software.

Amin Lotfalian Dehkordi: Data collection, investigation.