Life cycle assessment of sugar production in Hamadan sugar mill.

Iranian sugar is one of the most important commodities of the national agro based industries. However Iranian sugar mills are old and technologically outdated and are therefore responsible for a large share of the environmental burden of food production. Sugar mills use various inputs during processing which include chemicals, limestone, electricity, water, natural gas and are also responsible for a series of the burdening emissions. The present study stems from a project whose aim is that of optimising Iranian sugar production. Specifically for the work described here, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was applied to the Hamadan sugar mill. For cultivation phase data from 88 sugar beet farms were collected. This information was then used, together with the inventory data from the sugar mill, to calculate the environmental impact of sugar production in terms of impact categories. The preliminary LCA results indicate that the role of electricity and natural gas are high in impact categories due to agricultural and industrial phases, respectively.