pubs.acs.

org/journal/ascecg Research Article

Life Cycle Environmental Impact Assessment of Sulfur-Based

Compound Fertilizers: A Case Study in China
Mengyue Liu, Yue Li, Xueliang Yuan,* Yue Xu, Liang Qiao, Qingsong Wang, and Qiao Ma
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ABSTRACT: The reduced atmospheric sulfur input has led to sulfur

deficiency in plants. Sulfur-based compound fertilizers have been widely used
in order to provide necessary sulfate. However, their environmental impacts
Downloaded via AIX-MARSEILLE UNIV on December 9, 2022 at 20:00:06 (UTC).

have been less studied. A life cycle assessment approach is applied to evaluate
the environmental impact of sulfur-based compound fertilizers from “cradle to
grave”, with a typical fertilizer produced in China as a case study and 1 ton
fertilizer as a functional unit. The results show the environmental impacts
mainly related to human carcinogenic toxicity, fossil resource scarcity,
freshwater eutrophication, freshwater ecotoxicity, terrestrial acidification, and
marine ecotoxicity. Synthetic ammonia production, conversion, and fertilizer
use processes are the key processes, which contribute 26.6, 18.7, and 23.9%,
respectively. Electricity, potassium chloride, hard coal, rock phosphate, and
emission pollutants from fertilizer use are key factors, contributing 17.6, 16.0,
14.2, 10.0, and 17.1%, respectively. Sensitivity analysis shows that electricity and
potassium chloride are the important factors to be optimized in the overall system. These results can be used to optimize the
fertilizer industry and frame policies in order to mitigate the overall environmental impacts of sulfur-based compound fertilizer
products under a life cycle framework.
KEYWORDS: sulfate, life cycle assessment, greenhouse gas emissions, fertilizer use, sustainable chemical fertilizer production

■ INTRODUCTION
With the increasing human demand for agricultural products,
global agriculture is facing the challenges of improving crop
yield in a relatively reduced amount of agricultural land.
Fertilizers are a basic input in agricultural production whose
use can maintain soil fertility and promote crop yield.
Fertilizers contribute 40−60% to global crop yield increase.1
Fertilizers are critical to ensure food security given that food
demand is expected to increase by 50−100% by 2050.2 China
is a largely agricultural country having 9% of the world’s total
agricultural land, and it feeds 20% of the world’s population
consuming a third of the world’s fertilizers.3 The amount of
fertilizers applied in China has increased more than five times
from 8.84 million tons in 1978 to 54.04 million tons in 2019.
Compound fertilizers refer to the chemical fertilizers with more
than one of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K)
nutrients, and are widely used due to their high nutrient
content. The proportion of compound fertilizers in total
fertilizers applied has increased annually, increasing from 27%
in 2005 to 41% in 2019.4 Compound fertilizers have become
the leading product of the chemical fertilizer industry in China.
Sulfur-based compound fertilizers are a common compound
fertilizer, providing not only nitrogen, phosphorus, and
potassium but also sulfate (SO42−). Sulfur is a nutrient that
is essential for healthy growth of plants. A reduced sulfur input
from acidic atmospheric deposition from industry and the use
of fertilizers containing little or no sulfur have led to
widespread sulfur deficiency in plants. The global agricultural
sulfur deficiency in 2012 was as high as 11 Mt, including 6 Mt
in Asia and 2.4 Mt in China.5 Studies showed that the addition
of S increased biomass and grain yield.6 The cycling of N and S
in soil has the potential to be interactive. The deficiency of S
could reduce the use efficiency of N and vice versa.7 Sulfur
application also affects the stress resistance of a crop,8 the level
of heavy metals,9 and the quality of grains.10 The most
common S sources contain either sulfate or elemental sulfur.
As an applicable approach to provide sulfate, the land use of
sulfur-based compound fertilizers has received widespread
attention.
The fertilizer industry is a typical chemical industry with
high energy consumption and pollutant emissions. The total
annual energy consumption amounts (equivalent to standard
coal) for the production of nitrogen, phosphorus, and
Received: August 11, 2021
Revised: January 23, 2022
Published: February 7, 2022

© 2022 American Chemical Society https://doi.org/10.1021/acssuschemeng.1c05450

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Figure 1. System boundary of the sulfur-based compound fertilizer.
potassium fertilizers in China are 82.41, 4.75, and 1.26 million
tons, respectively, accounting for 2.4% of total primary energy
consumption and 3.5% of industrial energy consumption in
2013.11 The fertilizer industry, which relies heavily on fossil
fuels, inevitably causes large greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Chemical fertilizers accounted for approximately 57% of the
total GHG emissions from agricultural inputs in China.12 The
overuse of chemical fertilizers also poses significant environ-
mental risks, such as water eutrophication,13 soil degradation,14
and damage to human health, ecosystem, and biodiversity.15
Therefore, the fertilizer industry plays an important role in
energy conservation and emission reduction. The environ-
mental impact, energy consumption, GHG emissions, and
sustainable development of the chemical fertilizer industry
should be explored.
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Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an effective environmental
management tool that quantifies the environmental impact of a
system throughout its entire life cycle from extraction,
production, use, end-of-life, and reuse. LCA has been widely
used in the environmental impact assessment of fertilizer
production in the system boundary of “cradle-to-gate”, such as
nitrogen fertilizers,16 phosphate fertilizers,17 potash fertil-
izers,18 and compound fertilizers.19 A cradle-to-grave LCA
for the fertilizer supply chain in Germany was investigated.20
An increasing number of researchers have focused on GHG
emissions in agriculture in recent years. Wang et al. evaluated
the impact of various fertilizer products on GHG emissions
from “cradle-to-grave” and showed that ammonium bicar-
bonate, calcium superphosphate, and potassium chloride had
the lowest GHG emissions among N, P, and K fertilizers,
respectively.21 Wu et al. assessed the GHG emissions of seven
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fertilizers on nine crops from “cradle-to-grave” by using a life
cycle GHG accounting approach; they found that urea, a
compound fertilizer, and diammonium hydrogen phosphate
had a larger amount of GHG emissions.22 Other studies
indicate that fertilizers are the largest source of GHG emissions
from crop production systems,23 while the GHG emissions in
the use stage are determined by the nitrogen content in the
fertilizers.
The abovementioned studies comprehensively analyzed the
environmental impacts of the fertilizer industry. However,
most of the existing studies focus only on the production
process of fertilizers or analyze only the environmental impacts
of the fertilizer use stage. Moreover, studies that evaluate the
environmental impacts of the entire life cycle of fertilizers focus
on GHG emissions only. By contrast, a considerable amount of
literature has reported that the land use of fertilizers has a large
environmental impact on water eutrophication and soil
acidification. Therefore, a comprehensive environmental
impact assessment of the whole life cycle of fertilizers should
be conducted. The evaluation of environmental impacts of
sulfur-based compound fertilizers throughout their life cycle
has not yet been conducted as well.
In this study, a sulfur-based compound fertilizer was selected
as the object to conduct the environmental impact assessment
of the entire life cycle including raw material extraction,
transportation, production, and use. The conclusion of this
study will fill the gap of LCA research in this field and provide
optimization suggestions for the sustainable development of
the fertilizer industry.
■
METHODS
Goal and Scope. A sulfur-based compound fertilizer producer in
China was selected for a case study. The manufacturer can produce
100,000 tons of sulfur-based compound fertilizer and 30,000 tons of
synthetic ammonia per year. As shown in Figure 1, the cradle-to-grave
system boundary was selected. The functional unit is the baseline to
quantify the performance of a product system. One ton of sulfur-
based compound fertilizer was selected as the functional unit,
including the production and use of 1 ton fertilizer. The nutrient
content of this sulfur-based compound fertilizer is 15−15−15 (i.e.,
mass percentage of nutrient composition is 15% N, 15% P2O5, and
15% K2O).
Multioutput processes require inventory allocation methods to
analyze the flow of material and energy and the allocation of the
corresponding environmental loads between the main products and
byproducts along the production chain.24 In the production of sulfur-
based compound fertilizers, the phosphoric acid production process,
synthetic ammonia production, and compound fertilizer conversion
section generate phosphogypsum, methanol, and hydrochloric acid as
byproducts, respectively. Among them, the economic value of
phosphogypsum is less. The producer processes phosphogypsum to
generate gypsum boards for sale. These products are important
components in the supply chain and have a certain economic value.
Thus, the allocation should be considered in the production process.
In this study, a market value-based allocation approach is applied to
assess the environmental impacts of compound fertilizer production.
This method is based on the economic value of products and
byproducts, and is usually the preferred method in allocation
studies.25 The principle of allocation according to market value is
that the quality of each product is multiplied by the respective market
price per unit of quality and divided by the sum of the quality and
market value of all outputs. The selling price of gypsum board of the
producer is 150 RMB/t, and the selling price of methanol is 1460
RMB/t. Hydrochloric acid, which is low in concentration and
contains traces of K+ and SO42−, has a low economic value. The
producer commonly pays for the transportation and disposal of the
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byproducts. Therefore, the hydrochloric acid is not involved in the
allocation. The allocation factors of each product of the sulfur-based
compound fertilizer under one functional unit are shown in Table 1.
Table 1. Allocation Factors of Each Product of the Sulfur-
Based Compound Fertilizer
market value allocation factors Af[v]
product name (RMB) (%)
sulfur-based compound 2200.00 95.98
fertilizer
gypsum board 71.19 3.11
methanol 20.89 0.91
hydrochloric acid 0.00 0.00
totals 2292.08 100
Life Cycle Inventory. The life cycle of the sulfur-based
compound fertilizer consists of three major stages: transportation,
production, and use. The transportation stage involves the trans-
portation of raw materials and sulfur-based compound fertilizer
products. The raw material of hard coal is transported via a rail freight
over a distance of 880 km. The main energy consumption of railroad
transportation is composed of diesel and electricity, with consumption
intensity rates of 0.025 L/(t·km) and 0.016 kW h/(t·km),
respectively.26 The energy consumption of road transport is from
the fuel consumption of trucks, and the value is 0.06 L/(t·km).27
Most of the raw materials except hard coal are purchased from
neighboring cities, and the road transportation distance is assumed to
be 50 km. Sulfur-based compound fertilizer products are transported
in two stages: from producers to retailers and from retailers to
farmers, with the average transportation distances assumed as 150 and
15 km, respectively.
In this paper, data on raw material consumption for production and
direct emissions of conventional pollutants are obtained from field
investigation. Potassium chloride and concentrated sulfuric acid react
in the reaction tank to produce hydrogen chloride gas and potassium
bisulfate solution. After the hydrogen chloride gas is absorbed by the
two-level falling film and two-level packed tower, 31% hydrochloric
acid is produced as a byproduct. Potassium bisulfate flows into the
mixed acid tank, and the extracted phosphoric acid is added at the
same time to obtain the mixed acid. The mixed acid is pumped to the
tubular reactor, and gas ammonia is fed to the neutralization reaction
to produce the neutralized slurry. The neutralized slurry enters the
granulator and mixes with urea, ammonium sulfate, and other raw
materials for granulation. The final product is obtained after drying,
cooling, and packaging. The individual production processes are
further divided into compound fertilizer production conversion,
neutralization and granulation, and waste gas treatment sections.
Foreground data on the production of phosphoric acid and synthetic
ammonia, which are important raw materials for the production of
compound fertilizers, are obtained from the actual production data of
the company. Background data on the production of raw materials are
obtained from the Ecoinvent 3 database. The environmental impact of
solid wastes from synthetic ammonia production, neutralization, and
granulation is ignored because these wastes are sold to construction
companies for reuse. In addition, the environmental impact caused by
the infrastructure is generally not included in the inventory according
to the ISO 14040/14044.
During the land use of fertilizers, nitrogen is mainly emitted into
the air in the form of N2O, NH3, and NOx, and leaches into water in
the form of NO3−.28 The loss of phosphorus into water can occur
through runoff (phosphate), erosion to rivers (phosphorus), and
leaching to groundwater (phosphate).29 The on-farm emission factors
caused by the land use of fertilizers and related references are shown
in Table 2. Heavy metal residues caused by industrial sulfuric acid,
rock phosphate, and other raw materials in fertilizer production also
directly enter the soil with the use of fertilizers, thus causing
environmental pollution.29 Heavy metal losses are estimated by
input−output balances. The average contents of As, Cd, Pb, Cr, and
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Table 2. On-Farm Emission Factors in Fertilizer Use Background data refer to the data on the basic unit process.
Background databases for LCA have been developed and established
pollutant emissions parameter/% required data references in many countries, such as USLCI in the U.S., ELCD in Europe, and
N2O (direct emissions) 1.25 total N input 31 the Ecoinvent database in Switzerland. These databases are available
in SimaPro software.

■
N2O (indirect emissions 1 NH3 volatilization 32
from NH3)
N2O (indirect emissions 2.5 NO3− leaching 32 RESULTS
from NO3−) amount
NH3 7.6 total N input 33
LCIA Results. Based on the established LCI (Table S2), the
NOx 10 total N2O input 34
18 midpoint environmental impact characterization results in
NO3− 14 total N input 35 the full life cycle of the sulfur-based compound fertilizer are
P 0.2 total P input 29 quantified with the ReCiPe2016 model, as shown in Table 3.

Hg in compound fertilizers were 11.06, 0.24, 2.95, 19.7, and 0.054 Table 3. Characterization Results of the Sulfur-Based
mg/kg,30 and the specific content of heavy metals in the soil caused Compound Fertilizer
by fertilizer use was estimated.
results after
Pollutants and GHGs are released due to fuel combustion during category unit allocation
transportation, fertilizer production, and use. Emissions of pollutants
global warming kg CO2 eq 2.379 × 103
from diesel combustion during transportation and fertilizer use are
calculated according to the recommended emission coefficients.36 stratospheric ozone depletion kg CFC11 eq 2.693 × 10−2
CO2 emission is calculated with eq 1. ionizing radiation kBq Co-60 eq −8.816 × 100
ozone formation, human health kg NOx eq 4.183 × 100
44
c = e × NCV × A × O × fine particulate matter formation kg PM2.5 eq 5.205 × 100
12 (1)
ozone formation, terrestrial kg NOx eq 4.229 × 100
where c represents the carbon emission of 1 ton of sulfur-based ecosystems
compound fertilizer; e is the direct energy consumption; NCV terrestrial acidification kg SO2 eq 2.937 × 101
denotes the net calorific value; A represents the carbon content per freshwater eutrophication kg P eq 5.425 × 10−1
unit calorific value; and O is the carbon oxidation rate of the fuel. The marine eutrophication kg N eq 1.416 × 100
specific values and data sources of each parameter are shown in Table terrestrial ecotoxicity kg 1,4-DCB 2.009 × 103
S1 in the Supporting Information. A life cycle inventory (LCI) of freshwater ecotoxicity kg 1,4-DCB 2.042 × 101
sulfur-based compound fertilizers is shown in Table S2 in the
marine ecotoxicity kg 1,4-DCB 2.943 × 101
Supporting Information.
human carcinogenic toxicity kg 1,4-DCB 3.402 × 101
Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA). The ReCiPe Midpoint
(H) model is used in this study to perform environmental quantitative human non-carcinogenic toxicity kg 1,4-DCB 7.876 × 102
analysis. The ReCiPe model, which integrates CML (Centrum land use m2a crop eq 6.581 × 101
Milieukunde Leiden) and the Eco-indicator model, is a widely mineral resource scarcity kg Cu eq 3.090 × 101
adopted method.37 The ReCiPe model is mainly used to solve the fossil resource scarcity kg oil eq 5.088 × 102
issues of normalization of the model and harmonize the midpoint water consumption m3 1.098 × 101
(CML) and endpoint (Eco-indicator) models into a single, consistent
approach. The ReCiPe2016 model can translate all LCA results into
18 midpoint levels. The total of 18 midpoint environmental impacts, The characterization results are normalized (eq 2) to further
such as global warming potential, ozone depletion potential, and compare the differences between the different impact
ionizing radiation potential, are quantified using midpoint character- categories. The LCA results in Figure 2 show that the entire
istic factors. life cycle of the sulfur-based compound fertilizer mainly has
The data are normalized to further analyze the contribution of each environmental impacts related to human carcinogenic toxicity,
impact category to the total environmental load; accordingly, fossil resource scarcity, freshwater eutrophication, freshwater
information on the relative importance of the LCA results can be ecotoxicity, terrestrial acidification, and marine ecotoxicity,
provided. Normalization is usually based on total emissions per capita accounting for 32.1, 20.1, 8.1, 7.9, 7.0, and 6.6%, respectively,
or total resource consumption per capita at a global or regional level.
The regionalized normalization process can provide more accurate
of the total environmental impact load. Stratospheric ozone
results, which are more consistent with local conditions. However, depletion, marine eutrophication, global warming, fine
local baselines were unavailable in most developing countries. Thus, particulate matter formation, ozone formation, and terrestrial
the normalization for this research is based on global environmental ecotoxicity also have certain environmental impacts, account-
impacts, with normalization factors referred to the data obtained using ing for 18% of the total environmental impacts. The other
the ReCiPe model. The normalization method is described as eq 2. impact categories have a less environmental impact.
CR c Identification of Key Processes. The environmental
NR c = contribution of each process is shown in Figure 3. Human
NFc,world (2) carcinogenic toxicity is the category with the highest
where NR, c, CR, NF, and world are the normalization results, environmental impact (32.1%). The main process that
category, characterization results, normalization factor, and the global contributes to this category is the synthetic ammonia
environmental potential of ecosystems caused by emission and production process, which contributes 39.7% of the environ-
extraction,38 respectively. mental impact. The conversion of compound fertilizer
LCA Modeling Platform. SimaPro 9.0 provides the ReCiPe 2016 production (18.4%), the phosphoric acid production process
model, which was selected as the modeling platform for the
environmental impact assessment in this study. The data for the (18%), and the neutralization and granulation stage (13.9%)
LCA consist of foreground data and background data. The foreground are also major contributors to human carcinogenic toxicity.
data are obtained from the producer through on-site investigation, Fossil resource scarcity, freshwater eutrophication, fresh-
which can directly reflect the amount of raw materials, energy water ecotoxicity, terrestrial acidification, and marine ecotox-
consumption, and waste emission in the production process. icity are other impact categories that account for more than 5%
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Figure 2. Normalized environmental impact of the sulfur-based compound fertilizer.

Figure 3. Percentage of environmental impact of each process of the sulfur-based compound fertilizer.

of the total environmental impact. The environmental impact
of terrestrial acidification comes mainly from the fertilizer use
process, which contributes 75.2% of the environmental load. In
addition to terrestrial acidification, the conversion, synthetic
ammonia production, neutralization, and granulation processes
account for more than 10% of the remaining four impact
categories, with the conversion process accounting for nearly
50% of the freshwater ecotoxicity and marine ecotoxicity. The
phosphoric acid production process also shows a large
environmental contribution, with 13.8, 18.7, 7.3, and 8.3%
for the four impact categories, respectively.
In general, the phosphoric acid production process (12.7%),
synthetic ammonia production process (26.6%), conversion
process (18.7%), neutralization and granulation process
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(13.6%), and fertilizer use (22.9%) contribute more than
94% of the total environmental impact. They are also the key
processes in the life cycle of the sulfur-based compound
fertilizer.
Identification of Key Factors. The share of major factors
in the environmental impacts of key processes has been
identified. As shown in Figure 4, rock phosphate, which is the
raw material used in the production of phosphoric acid, is the
main substance that causes environmental pollution. Its
environmental impact accounts for 78.8% of the total
environmental impact of phosphoric acid production. Hard
coal and electric power account for 54.1 and 42.2% of the total
influence of synthetic ammonia production, respectively.
Potassium chloride, which is the raw material for the
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Figure 4. Percentages of environmental impacts of key factors in (a) phosphoric acid production process, (b) synthetic ammonia production
process, (c) conversion process, (d) neutralization and granulation process, and (e) fertilizer use process.
conversion section, has an environmental impact of up to
85.6%, thus also being a key substance in the process. In the
neutralization and granulation stage, ammonium sulfate,
electricity, anticaking agent, and urea are the main contributors
to the environmental impact, with environmental impact ratios
of 40.6, 17.6, 12.8, and 12.3%, respectively. The environmental
impact of the fertilizer use process mainly comes from diesel
and pollutant emissions to air, water, and soil, among which
diesel contributes 20.8% of the environmental impact and
nitrogenous pollutants NH3, N2O, and NO3− account for 27.4,
23.4, and 12.8% of the total environmental impact of fertilizer
use process, respectively.
The proportion of environmental load of different factors in
the major environmental impact categories is decomposed to
further explore the key factors (Figure 5). Electricity
contributes the most to the environmental impact (17.6%),
followed by pollutant emission from the fertilizer use (17.1%),
potassium chloride (16.0%), and hard coal (14.2%). The major
environmental impacts are concentrated in human carcino-
genic toxicity for electricity, hard coal, rock phosphate,
ammonium sulfate, and potassium chloride. The production
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and processing of diesel greatly impact fossil resource scarcity,
which contributes 41.5% of the environmental impact. The
effect of pollutant discharge during fertilizer use on terrestrial
acidification is 30.1%. Meanwhile, rock phosphate, hard coal,
and potassium chloride contribute more than 15% of the
environmental load.
Sensitivity Analysis. Figure 6 compares the degree of
environmental impact of a 10% change in major input factors.
The results show that electricity plays a decisive role in human
carcinogenic toxicity and total environmental impact load
when the input of key factors is reduced by 10%, which leads
to reductions in their environmental impact by 0.998 kg 1,4-
DCB and 2.624 × 10−11, respectively. This finding also means
that a 10% reduction in electricity would result in a decrease of
2.9% in human carcinogenic toxicity and 1.7% in total
environmental impact. Electricity also has a large impact on
fossil resource scarcity, and this effect is closely related to the
China’s coal-based power generation structure. In addition, the
change in the potassium chloride input has the most significant
impact on freshwater ecotoxicity and marine ecotoxicity. The
change in the potassium chloride input provides benefits of 4.6
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Figure 5. Percentage of major factors in different environmental impact categories (the left bar shows the total environmental impact load of the
sulfur-based compound fertilizer. HCT: human carcinogenic toxicity; FRS: fossil resource scarcity; TA: terrestrial acidification; FE: freshwater
eutrophication; FET: freshwater ecotoxicity; MET: marine ecotoxicity; and ROC: rest of categories).
Figure 6. Sensitivity analysis results of the environmental impact of a
10% change in key input factors (the size of the bubbles represents
the degree of change in each environmental impact category. The
larger the size of the bubble, the greater the impact on the
environment. The same key factors are consistent in color for
environmental impacts).
and 4.6%, which are three times as much as those of electricity,
hard coal, and rock phosphate, respectively. Therefore, the
optimization of power and potassium chloride is the key to
reduce the environmental impact of sulfur-based compound
fertilizers. Hard coal has a large impact on fossil resource
scarcity, and a 10% change in its input would result in a 9.83 kg
oil eq reduction in fossil resource scarcity. The most significant
change in freshwater eutrophication is observed for a 10%
change in the rock phosphate input, which produces an
environmental gain of 1.8%. A change in the diesel input can
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have a 1.5% benefit on fossil resource scarcity. Changes in the
ammonium sulfate input yield a smaller environmental benefit.
Pollutant emission from the fertilizer use is also a key factor.
The excessive use of chemical fertilizers causes a greater risk to
the environment. Stratospheric ozone depletion and marine
eutrophication have the most significant environmental impact
for a 10% reduction in the land use of sulfur-based compound
fertilizers, yielding benefits of 9.9% and 9.6%, respectively.
Terrestrial acidification, fine particulate matter formation, and
global warming also have large environmental benefits,
reducing the environmental load by 7.4%, 5.2%, and 3.6%,
respectively. The results are shown in Figure 7. Therefore, the
reduced fertilizer input can effectively improve pollutant
emissions from the fertilizer use.
■ DISCUSSION
GHG Emissions from the Fertilizer Industry. The result
of the entire life cycle GHG emission of the sulfur-based
compound fertilizer is 2380 kg CO2 eq per ton of fertilizer, in
which the GHG emission of the production process is 1485 kg
CO2 eq, and the GHG emission of the fertilizer use process is
895 kg CO2 eq. The GHG emissions of various types of
fertilizers in production, use, or the entire life cycle were
analyzed after referring to other relevant studies.
Among the nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and compound
fertilizers, the production and use process of potash fertilizers
has the lowest GHG emissions.18,21 From the use stage, the
GHG emission of nitrogen fertilizers is the largest. Analysis of
the key factors above shows that pollutants from the fertilizer
use are mainly nitrogen-containing gases, which are mainly due
to the lower nitrogen use efficiency (NUE); this phenomenon
results in volatilization and loss of nitrogen. A higher NUE is
desired to protect ground and surface waters. Studies have
shown that S addition increased biomass and grain yield,10
reporting a positive interaction between N and S, which was
reflected in a greater NUE.7 Hasler et al. analyzed the
environmental impact of compound fertilizers with nutrient
contents of 15−15−15.20 The GHG emissions were 1440 kg
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Figure 7. Sensitivity analysis of pollutant emissions from 10% change of the fertilizer use.
CO2 eq when the functional units were converted to 1 ton of
compound fertilizer, which is lower than the GHG emissions
calculated in the current study. The reason for this difference is
that the input energy in the study by Hasler et al. is mainly
clean energy natural gas, with minimal use of coal. In addition
to nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium elements, the
compound fertilizer in the current work also has sulfate
obtained through ammonium sulfate. More raw material inputs
lead to greater GHG emissions.
The ammonia synthesis industry is an important part of the
basic chemical industry, with the global capacity of nearly 188
million tons in 2020, which is mainly for fertilizer production
(around 80%).39 Ammonia synthesis is also a typical process
with high energy consumption and GHG emission. The main
energy sources of ammonia production are coal, natural gas,
coke, and petroleum, with an average energy consumption of
28−53 MJ/kg and a total annual emission of 451 Mt CO2.40
China is the world’s largest ammonia producer with an annual
output of 49.7 Mt, which accounts for 32% of the global
ammonia production. Unlike other countries that use natural
gas as energy, China’s ammonia production energy is 70%
from coal, 10% from oil, and only 20% from natural gas. The
coal-based energy structure of the China’s ammonia industry
causes serious pollution, with much higher carbon emissions
and higher energy consumption levels than those of other
regions of the world. In this case, the carbon emissions from
the production of ammonia in this enterprise account for 81%
of the total emissions from the production process, which is
the key link of GHG emissions in fertilizer production. The
Chinese government has issued several policies and standards
to strengthen energy conservation and emission reduction in
the synthetic ammonia industry. In recent years, many new
energy-based ammonia production technologies have emerged
in addition to ammonia production technologies based on
traditional fossil fuels. The hydrogen required for ammonia
synthesis can be obtained from high-temperature water
electrolysis, biomass gasification, and biogas reforming.41
Although these new technologies can achieve zero fossil
energy consumption, they also have the disadvantage of low
economic benefits and difficulty in large-scale production.
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High energy consumption will cause a large amount of GHG
emissions, thereby requiring producers to explore the measures
to save energy and materials. Zhang et al. reported that GHG
emissions from the fertilizer industry could be significantly
reduced by increasing the methane recovery rate of the coal-
mining process and the energy efficiency of the fertilizer
production process, which resulted in a reduction in GHG
emissions of 102−357 Mt CO2 eq per year and a 2−6%
reduction in the total GHG emissions.42 In addition, the
thermal power generation structure is an important cause of
high GHG emissions. The construction of a clean energy-based
power structure is the way to fundamentally address GHG
emissions. With the Chinese government’s proposed “Carbon
Peaking” and “Carbon Neutrality” targets, the proportion of
renewable power generation capacity is expected to increase
from 41.9% in 2019 to 57.5% in 2025, which can lead to a
significant reduction of GHG emissions from sulfur-based
compound fertilizer production.
Optimization Suggestion. Sensitivity analysis revealed
that the optimization of potassium chloride is the key to reduce
the environmental impact of the sulfur-based compound
fertilizer besides power optimization. Soluble potassium salt
is an important raw material for the production of potassium
chloride, but it is in short supply in China, and depends on
imports due to the huge demand for agricultural development.
However, the common methods of potassium chloride
production have the disadvantages of high toxicity, expensive
reagents, complicated processes, and high environmental
impacts.43 The potassium chloride required to produce the
sulfur-based compound fertilizer in this study accounts for
15.3% of the total environmental impact load. The environ-
mental impacts were mainly concentrated in human carcino-
genic toxicity, freshwater ecotoxicity, marine ecotoxicity, fossil
resource scarcity, and terrestrial ecotoxicity, contributing 33.2,
22.6, 18.9, 9.9 and 4.4% of the environmental load,
respectively. At present, the main production process of
potassium chloride in China is froth flotation. However, the
grade of the potassium ore decreases due to improper mining
methods; moreover, the recovery rate of flotation also
decreases obviously with the decline in temperature.44 This
method should improve the quality of raw ore for potassium
https://doi.org/10.1021/acssuschemeng.1c05450
ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng. 2022, 10, 2308−2317
ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering
chloride production, optimize the processes, and enhance
potassium salt recovery. Producers should also explore new
production processes to improve the production efficiency of
potassium chloride and reduce the consumption of raw
materials. On the other side, potassium chloride can also be
extracted from the dust ash of steel plants.45 Alternatives to
potash have attracted wide attention due to the high price of
potash and the scarcity of conventional potassium sources. A
good substitute is potassium silicate minerals, of which mica
has been shown to achieve the same fertility as potassium
chloride.46
Rock phosphate is also a key substance that causes
environmental impacts in fertilizer production providing the
element phosphorus necessary for crop growth and providing
one of the three essential elements for crop growth. The
amount of phosphorus extracted from rock phosphate will peak
around 2030, and the global reserves will be exhausted within
75−100 years.47 Therefore, the recovery of phosphorus
resources is particularly important. Humans excrete 98% of
phosphorus that ends up in sewage sludge,48 which makes it
the most valuable resource for phosphorus recovery.
■ CONCLUSIONS
A cradle-to-grave LCA analysis per 1 ton of sulfur-based
compound fertilizer is performed. The localized LCI in China
is disclosed. Environmental impacts are classified into 18
ReCiPe 2016 Midpoint impact categories. The LCA results
showed that synthetic ammonia production, conversion, and
fertilizer use processes are the key processes. Electricity,
potassium chloride, hard coal, rock phosphate, and pollutant
emissions from the fertilizer use are key factors. Their
contribution to the total environmental impact were identified
so that feasible suggestions on improving environmental
performance were given. Sensitivity analysis shows that
electricity and potassium chloride are the priority factors to
be optimized in the overall system. The construction of a
power structure dominated by renewable energy can reduce
the GHG emissions of the power generation process;
extracting potassium chloride from dust ash or selecting mica
as a substitute, and effectively recovering phosphorus from
sewage sludge can reduce the environmental load. Research
findings provide valuable insights to stakeholders for effectively
reducing the environmental impacts from the chemical
fertilizer industry.
However, the current study has limitations. The environ-
mental benefits of sulfur-based compound fertilizer inputs to
different crops and the carbon sink of soils and crops are not
considered. These issues will be addressed in the future work.
■
ASSOCIATED CONTENT
* Supporting Information
sı
The Supporting Information is available free of charge at
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssuschemeng.1c05450.
Calculation parameters of fuel carbon emissions and LCI
of the sulfur-based compound fertilizer (PDF)
■
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Author
Xueliang Yuan − School of Energy and Power Engineering,
Shandong University, Jinan 250061, China; orcid.org/
0000-0002-7331-1059; Phone: +86 531 88399372;
Email: yuanxl@sdu.edu.cn; Fax: +86 531 88395877
2316
pubs.acs.org/journal/ascecg Research Article
Authors
Mengyue Liu − School of Energy and Power Engineering,
Shandong University, Jinan 250061, China
Yue Li − School of Energy and Power Engineering, Shandong
University, Jinan 250061, China
Yue Xu − School of Energy and Power Engineering, Shandong
University, Jinan 250061, China
Liang Qiao − School of Energy and Power Engineering,
Shandong University, Jinan 250061, China
Qingsong Wang − School of Energy and Power Engineering,
Shandong University, Jinan 250061, China
Qiao Ma − School of Energy and Power Engineering,
Shandong University, Jinan 250061, China
Complete contact information is available at:
https://pubs.acs.org/10.1021/acssuschemeng.1c05450
Notes
The authors declare no competing financial interest.
■
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was supported by National Key R&D Plan of
China (2020YFC1910000), National Natural Science Founda-
tion (71974116), Shandong Natural Science Foundation
(ZR2019MG009), Shandong Social Science Planning Research
Project (21BKRJ02), and Taishan Scholar Project
(tsqn202103010).
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