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Environmental and Socio-economic Impact Assessment of the Switchgrass Production in Heavy Metals Contaminated Soils

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Innovations in Mechanical Engineering (icieng 2021)

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Abstract

The increased demand for biomass to produce bioenergy is arousing prices and land-use concurrence. These conflicts may be solved by producing dedicated crops for energy on surplus land that cannot be used for food, feed, nature conservation, or urbanization, reducing the indirect land-use change (ILUC) problems. This work aims to evaluate the environmental and socio-economic impact of switchgrass production in heavy metals contaminated soils. To determine ecological, social and economic sustainability, different categories were studied: energy balance, gases emission, land use, biological and landscape diversity, cost savings/losses, costs of CO2 abatement, consumers/producer’s acceptance and potential employment creation. Overall results suggest that switchgrass production in heavy metals contaminated soils has positive aspects and others less positive over switchgrass production in non-contaminated soils. The productivity loss in Cu and Zn contaminated soils reduces the energy, costs, and greenhouse savings but may contribute to improve the biological and landscape diversity and the soil and waters quality. In Pb and Cd contaminated soils, there was no adverse effect on the productivity, and after that, no effects on the environmental and socio-economic aspects, compared to non-contaminated soils. Yet, in Cr contaminated soils, the toxicity affected the switchgrass significantly, and no productivity was observed.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Mechanical Engineering and Resource Sustainability Center-MEtRICs, which is financed by national funds from FCT/MCTES (UIDB/04077/2020 and UIDP/04077/2020).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. MEtRICs, Departamento de Ciências e Tecnologia da Biomassa, NOVA School of Science and Technology|FCT NOVA, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Campus de Caparica, 2829-516, Caparica, Portugal

    Leandro Augusto Gomes, Jorge Costa & Ana Luísa Fernando

  2. Escola de Gestão, Engenharia e Aeronáutica, Instituto Superior de Educação e Ciências Lisboa, Alameda das Linhas de Torres 179, 1750-142, Lisboa, Portugal

    Jorge Costa

  3. Universidade Estadual ddo Rio Grande do Sul, Avenida Bento Gonçalves 8855, Porto Alegre, 91540-000, Brazil

    Fernando Santos

Authors
  1. Leandro Augusto Gomes
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  2. Jorge Costa
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  3. Fernando Santos
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  4. Ana Luísa Fernando
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Correspondence to Ana Luísa Fernando .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Minho, Guimarães, Portugal

    José Machado

  2. Department of Industrial Electronics, University of Minho, Guimarães, Portugal

    Filomena Soares

  3. Poznan University of Technology, Poznan, Poland

    Justyna Trojanowska

  4. Dept.of Civil and Mechanical Engineering, University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, Cassino, Italy

    Erika Ottaviano

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Gomes, L.A., Costa, J., Santos, F., Fernando, A.L. (2022). Environmental and Socio-economic Impact Assessment of the Switchgrass Production in Heavy Metals Contaminated Soils. In: Machado, J., Soares, F., Trojanowska, J., Ottaviano, E. (eds) Innovations in Mechanical Engineering. icieng 2021. Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79165-0_38

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79165-0_38

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