Sustainability assessment of succinic acid production from cyanobacteria

This work performs techno-economic assessment (TEA) and cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment (LCA) for a cyanobacterial system producing succinic acid (SA). Experimental studies of cyanobacteria cultivation producing disodium succinate (Na₂Succ) in culture were used to build a scaled-up process producing 100 tonnes/year of SA. High-temperature (HT) and low-temperature (LT) crystallization of SA (Process I) and purification using methanol addition (Process II) were considered for downstream separation. A combination of upstream experimental data, ecoinvent® 3.9 database, literature, and simulation data were used. ReCiPe 2016 impact assessment method was used. The production costs were INR 1,654/kg ($21.04/kg) and INR 1,501/kg ($19.09/kg) for processes I and II, respectively. Global warming potential (GWP) for processes I and II were 7.95 kg CO₂-eq and 6.32 kg CO₂-eq, respectively, for 1 kg of SA. 36% reduction in production cost and 52%-56% reduction in GWP was observed with succinate titer increase from 2 g/L to 5 g/L.