Flonudep

Flonudep (2010-2013, funded by the French National Research Agency) Promoting supply chain joining the sustainable development through a decision making tool combining three key elements of the fruit and vegetables market: environmental durability, nutritional quality, socio-economic aspects.
Contact:  Claudine Basset-Mens

Agri-Balyse

Agri-BALYSE (2010-2013, French Environment and Energy Management Agency) Research project on the environmental assessment with LCA of a panel of food products imported from tropical regions and consumed in France – Project coordinated within the Agri-BALYSE project.
Contact: Claudine Basset-Mens, Thierry Tran, Cécile Bessou, Sylvain Perret

Salinalgue

A biorefinery project based on microalgae

In a global context of resources scarcity and environment preservation, finding new options to fossil fuels is a big challenge. The Salinalgue project aims at cultivating a native microalgae (Dunaliella salina) at industrial scale in open ponds which are old salty lands.  Based on the biorefinery concept, biodiesel and others byproducts (as bioproducts…) will be produced  from microalgae.

The Salinalgue project has different goals:

  •  Open-ponds culture in extreme conditions
  • Use of CO2 gas from industrial exhaust pipes as input for the culture of microalgae
  • Use of wet extraction process: avoiding the energy-costing process of drying the biomass
  • Producing all by-products from the algae biomass.

Salinalgue project is lead by La Compagnie du Vent which works with industrial and institutionnal partners.

 The environmental approach is important and based on an environmental assessment all along the 4-year-project. One of the main goal is to design a sustainable way to produce biodiesel and other byproducts from microalgae.

The Life Cycle Assessment method assesses the environmental impacts of a product or a service. LCA allows to identify the hotspots where the process chain can be optimised, to compare different options and to keep a holistic point of view.

Salinalgue(2011-2014, funded by the French single interministerial fund) Bioenergy and other byproducts from microalgae culture in old salty lands.
Contact: Mélissa Cornelus, Arnaud Hélias

Montse Núñez

Montse Núñez is research engineer with a background in the environmental assessment of processes and products (year 2004) and Ph.D. in environmental sciences (year 2011) from the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (Spain).

The thesis focused on the development of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool to incorporate environmental impacts derived from the use of water and land, two resources that until that moment were hardly ever included in conventional LCA, although are essential for evaluating environmental performance of human intensive resource activities (e.g., agriculture). She has participated in LCA research projects such as the LC-IMPACT project (www.lc-impact.eu), the Ecotech-Sudoe project (http://www.ecotechsudoe.eu/) and the On Cultivos project (www.oncultivos.es/english).

Currently researcher of the Industrial Chair ELSA-PACT – Environmental Life cycle and Sustainability Assessment: a PAthway to Competitiveness through social & ecological Transition at Irstea, in Montpellier. The position deals with the improvement of water footprint metrics in LCA as well as the participation in thesis co-supervision.

Latest contributions to scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals:

Núñez M, Pfister S, Vargas M, Antón A. Spatial and temporal specific characterisation factors for water use impact assessment in Spain. The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, in press

Antón A, Torrellas M, Núñez M, Sevigné Itoiz E, Amores MJ, Muñoz P, Montero JI. (2014) Improvement of Agricultural LCA studies through spatial differentiation and new impact categories: Case Study on Greenhouse Tomato Production. Environmental Science and Technology, 48 (16): 9454-9462

Risch E, Loubet P, Núñez M, Roux P. (2014) How environmentally significant is water consumption during wastewater treatment plant?: Application of recent developments in LCA to WWT technologies used at 3 contrasted geographical locations. Water Research, 57: 20-30

Loubet P, Roux P, Núñez M, Belaud G, Bellon-Maurel V. (2013) Assessing water deprivation at the sub-river basin scale in LCA integrating downstream cascade effects. Environmental Science and Technology, 47: 14242-14249

Núñez M, Pfister S, Roux P, Antón A. (2013) Estimating water consumption of potential natural vegetation on global dry lands: building an LCA framework for green water flows. Environmental Science and Technology, 47 (21): 12258-12265

Civit B, Arena AP, Núñez M, Muñoz P, Antón A,  Rieradevall J. (2013) Assessing potential desertification environmental impact in life cycle assessment. Part 2: agricultural case study in Spain and Argentina. The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 18 (7): 1302-1315

Núñez M, Antón A, Muñoz P, Rieradevall J. (2013) Inclusion of soil erosion impacts in life cycle assessment on a global scale: application to energy crops in Spain. The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 18 (4): 755-767

Hospido A, Núñez M, Antón A. (2013) Irrigation mix: how to include water sources when assessing freshwater consumption impacts associated to crops. The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 18 (4): 881-890

Kounina A, Margni M, Bayart, J-B, Boulay A-M, Berger M, Bulle C, Frischknecht R, Köhler A, Milà i Canals L, Motoshita M, Núñez M, Peters G, Pfister S, Ridoutt B, van Zelm R, Verones F, Humbert S. (2013) Review of methods addressing freshwater availability in life cycle inventory and impact assessment. The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 18 (3): 707-721

Núñez M, Pfister S, Antón A, Muñoz P, Hellweg S, Koehler A, Rieradevall J (2013) Assessing the environmental impacts of water consumption by energy crops grown in Spain. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 17 (1): 90-102

Thierry Tran

Researcher, Cirad, Montpellier
Activities: Development of the Life Cycle Analysis approach for the evaluation of tropical agro-industrial transformation processes:

– Evaluation and comparison of the environmental benefits and costs of various technological solutions.
-Support for the choice of technologies minimizing environmental impacts.
– Development of a database of environmental inventories for the production and transformation of agro-industrial tropical products.

Contact
E-mail: thierry.tran#cirad.fr

Philippe Roux

Philippe Roux, born in 1960, is a mechanical engineer and has a postgraduate degree in engineering processes. Research engineer in Irstea ITAP unit he is a designer, former head of Mechatronics laboratory in Cemagref Montpellier. During the last years, he has focused its activities on life cycle assessment and eco-design. He has a great experience on R&D involving industry and therefore he is the technological and eco-design specialist of the ELSA team. He participates in the scientific leadership of the European network PEER (Partnership for European Environmental Research) for everything that concerns eco-technologies). Historically involved in applications such as forestry, biomass-bioenergy and phytosanitary treatments, it invests gradually issues related to water usages, wastewater management and territories approaches.

Topics: Life cycle assessment, environmental technologies, eco-design, wastewater management, bioenergy.

philippe.roux#irstea.fr

Eva Risch

Eva Risch graduated from the Bordeaux Higher National School of Physics and Chemistry in September 2009 with an engineering background in physics and chemistry and a research masters in environmental chemistry. In May 2010, Eva joined the ELSA Team as a Irstea research engineer. Her role is to help develop Life Cycle Assessment methodologies by carrying research on certain environmental processes. She has focused on wastewater treatment efficiencies, comparing a conventional activated sludge wastewater treatment plant with a vertical flow constructed wetland as part of a Irstea – ONEMA (French National Agency for Water and Aquatic Environments) collaboration. Her interests include elemental mass balances in the studied processes, which allow one to quantify their utility functions as per the treatment of waste waters.

Topics: Life cycle assessment, wastewater treatment plant, vertical flow constructed wetlands, activated sludge, elemental mass balance.

Ludivine Pradeleix

Ludivine Pradeleix is an agronomist, specialised in agronomy and innovation from Supagro – University Institute for tropical rural development in Montpellier (Master’s degree, 2002),

She is doing a PhD on the environmental impacts of irrigated systems in tropical contexts. She is working in the G-EAU research unit in Irstea, Montpellier.

Developed in tropical contexts, her research focus on the environmental impacts caused by the qualitative and quantitative aspects of water uses in irrigated systems.

Topics: Life cycle assessment, irrigated systems, irrigation water.

 

Philippe Loubet (2011-2014)

Philippe Loubet is a process and environmental engineer graduated from National Institute of Applied Sciences (INSA) of Toulouse (master’s degree, 2010). He started a PhD thesis in October 2011, in collaboration with Veolia Eau d’Île-de-France and UMR ITAP (Information and technologies for agroprocesses) of Irstea.

He is working on the environmental evaluation of water uses at the scale of an urban territory within the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) framework. His study case is the greater Paris area.

Topics: Life Cycle Assessment, water footprint, water use, urban territories, megalopolis

philippe.loubet#irstea.fr

Pyrène Larrey-Lassalle (2009-2017)

Pyrène Larrey-Lassalle is engineer in environmental processes, particularly eco-processes, from the National Institute of Applied Sciences (INSA) of Toulouse. After working in a private consulting agency in eco-design and LCA (Life Cycle Assessment), she joined the ELSA team in October 2009. At that time she is in charge of managing and carrying out two industrial and institutional research projects in LCA: ANR COPOTERM (Innovative process for metal recovery in industrial wastewater) and ANR DEMETHER (Valorization of agricultural by-products for the production of a new insulation material). She is also involved in training for professionals and students, and conducts LCA studies and critical reviews (expertise) for private firms and/or consulting companies.

From March 2014, she begins a thesis (funded by the Industrial Research Chair ELSA-PACT) about the “Harmonization of environmental assessment methods: Convergence of “product-oriented” (LCA) and “site-oriented” approaches used in impact assessment studies – Application to examples in water management”.

Topics:  Environmental Assessment, Life cycle assessment, Site-oriented approach, Agro-bio-processes, Water management

pyrene.larrey-lassalle#irstea.fr

Laurent Lardon (2008 – 2013)

Researcher, INRA-LBE, Narbonne.
Laurent Lardon is an agronomist, he obtained a PhD in process engineering from Montpellier SupAgro in 2004. Since he stayed one year in CEMAGREF (Montpellier) and two years in the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). Since 2008 he is researcher in INRA-LBE, at Narbonne.
Its research field focuses on modelling and environmental assessment of pollution treatment and bioenergy production facilities. Its main inteserst is the propagation of uncertainty along the LCA procedure.
Themes : Life Cycle Assessment, Bioenergy, Uncertainty, Waste.

Contact : lardonl#supagro.inra.fr

Juliette Langlois (2010-2013)

Juliette Langlois is an agronomist graduated from Montpellier SupAgro (2009). She is currently pursuing a PhD on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of production system of bioenergy from saeweed cultivated in open ocean (WinSeaFuel project). Her research deals with the modelisation of the land use impact on the ecosystems.

Topics : Life Cycle Assessment, macroalgae, anaerobic digestion, marine biodiversity.

E-mail: langlois#supagro.inra.fr

CV J. Langlois

Mary Hanhoun (2011 – 2012)

Mary Hanhoun is a civil engineer (2003) and a PhD in process and environmental engineering from INP of Toulouse (2011).

In October 2011, Mary joined the ELSA as a post-doc to work on the Phosph’OR project. This project aims to develop recycling processes for phosphorus with agricultural purposes. Mary’s mission is to assess the environmental impact of these processes by the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), assess the impacts of each process with a view to application in agriculture and to build a sustainable and well-thought process.

Topics: Life cycle assessment, wastewater treatment processes, phosphorus recycling

mary.hahnoun#supagro.inra.fr

Pauline Feschet (2009-2014)

PhD student, CIRAD, Montpellier

Pauline Feschet is graduated from Economics University of Montpellier 1 and from Montpellier Supagro. After working on energy balance of fruit and vegetable importation supply chains at Cirad, she follows a PhP thesis since June 2009, contributing to the development of a method for assessing social and economic impacts of products throughout their life cycle (Social Life Cycle analysis). The scope is the agricultural sectors, especially the banana supply chain.

Topics: Social life cycle assessment, economics, banana

pauline.feschet#cirad.fr

François Dumoulin (2011 – 2014)

François Dumoulin is Master graduated in material engineering and environment from University of Technology of Troyes (UTT, 2010). After his Master thesis in eco-design for a railway supplier and a first experience as development engineer in a consulting agency, which supports projects of social economy, he joined the École des Mines, Alès, in September 2010 as research engineer for environmental assessment and eco-design. He gave lessons in LCA and eco-design until November 2011 before starting his PhD in December at CIRAD. His topic of research suggests to try answering a so far unanswered methodological question: how to estimate and assess potential environmental consequences of industrial ecology scenarios recycling locally organic residues in agriculture?

topics : environmental assessment, industrial  ecology, territorial ecology, recycling of organic residues, agriculture

francois.dumoulin#cirad.fr

Mélissa CORNELUS (since 2020)

Mélissa CORNELUS was a Research Engineer, working for EVEA (a consultancy firm dedicated to LCA and eco-design ) and since 2020 responsible for “GIS – Evaluation environnementale des produits agricoles et alimentaires”. As an agronomist engineer (Master’s degree, 2010) specialized in sustainable production of biomolecules, materials and fuels from agricultural raw materials, Mélissa joined the ELSA team since 2011 to work on the project named Salinalgue.
This project aims at developing a sustainable process to produce biofuel from microalgae. Her mission is to assess the environmental impacts using the Life Cycle Assessment methodology. Comparing different options, assessing environmental impacts of each step will permit to build a sustainable and well-thought process.

Profil Viadeo

Profil LinkedIn

Topics : Life cycle assessment, microalgae, biofuels, bio-refinery, MFA.

Pierre Collet (2009 – 2012)

Pierre Collet is graduated from the Montpellier National School of Agronomy, and specialised in water, cultivated lands and environment management. He follows a PhD thesis since february 2009 in in the Laboratory of Environmental Biotechnology on the environmental assessment of production of biogas from microalgae, within the ANR project “Symbiose”. One of the main objective of this PhD is the integration of temporal dynamics in LCA.

Topics: Life cycle assessment, microalgae, anaerobic digestion, dynamical modelling

pierre.collet#supagro.inra.fr

Juliette Cerceau (2010-2013)

Coming from social sciences and graduated in environmental management (INSA de Lyon), Juliette Cerceau, 27 years old, started a PhD thesis at the Ecole des Mines d’Alès (EMA).
As a consultant in sustainable development within Auxilia (a French consulting agency), she participated actively to action-research projects dealing with industrial ecology (COMETHE, CONFLUENT, DEPART).
Since September 2010, she chose to take part in the improvement of both theory and methods in industrial ecology by fulfilling a thesis project on water metabolism in harbors. Her social sciences’ background allows her to study industrial ecology through the prism of game theory and change management.

Topics: industrial ecology, water, social sciences, social network analysis, multicriteria analysis

juliette.cerceau#mines-ales.fr

Véronique Bellon-Maurel (2008 – Présent)

V. Bellon Maurel is agricultural engineer (1986), engineer in chief at « Ponts, Eaux et des Forêts », doctor and research supervisor in process engineering (INP Toulouse).

Since 2004, V. Bellon Maurel is professor at Montpellier SupAgro and carries out researches at UMR ITAP Laboratory (Information and Technologies for Agroprocesses).

V. Bellon Maurel is specialized in measurement and sensors and more especially in Near Infrared Spectrometry for assessing the composition of products (food, agricultural commodities and soil …). Since 2007, V. Bellon Maurel is the head of the Regioal Platform Ecotech-LR and has actively contributed to the set-up of the ELSA research pole. She coordinates the European Project Ecotool (IRSES 23 08 51) on tools for sustainibility assessment in agriculture and forestry and is national coordinator for Interreg project Ecotech-Sudoe (International Network on Life Cycle Analysis and Industrial Ecology). Since a sabbatical leave at Water Research Centre of UNSW, Sydney (2009-2010), she initiates researches in LCA on vineyard. She is presently supervising 2 PhD thesis related to LCA and water (E Loiseau, et L Pradeleix).

Topics: Life cycle assessment, ICT, Vineyard, Water, Irrigation

E-mail: veronique.bellon#irstea.fr

Eléonore Loiseau

Eléonore Loiseau graduated from AgroParisTech (Master’s degree, 2008) and from AgroParisTech – Engref (Post-Master degree for Management and Administration in environmental sciences and policies, 2010). She did her PhD thesis at ELSA on methodological proposals for performing an environmental assessment of territories based on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) framework, with an implementation in the French Mediterranean case study of ‘Bassin de Thau’. Since 2014, she has been working as a researcher in Irstea ITAP unit developing research on “territorial LCA” approach.

Topics: Life Cycle Assessment, Environmental Assessment, Territory, Eco-efficiency, Land use functions, Hybrid LCA, Process LCA, Environmental Input Output (EIO) LCA

Publications:

PhD Thesis: 

Loiseau E., 2014. Methodogical proposals for performing an environmental assessment of territories based on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) framework. PhD Thesis, Montpellier SupAgro, 280 p.

Link to her PhD dissertation: HERE

Articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals:

Loiseau E., Roux P., Junqua G., Maurel P., Bellon-Maurel V., 2014. Implementation of an adapted LCA framework to environmental assessment of a territory: important learning points from a French Mediterranean case study. Journal of Cleaner Production, in press. DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.05.059

Loiseau E., Roux P., Junqua G., Maurel P., Bellon-Maurel V., 2013. Adaptation of the LCA framework to environmental assessment in land planning. International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 18, pp 1533-1548. DOI:10.1007/s11367-013-0588-y

Loiseau E., Junqua G., Roux P., Bellon-Maurel V., 2012. Environmental assessment of a territory: an overview of existing tools and methods. Journal of environmental management, 112, pp 213-225. DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2012.07.024

eleonore.loiseau@irstea.fr

Catherine Macombe

Dr Catherine Macombe HdR, is an agronomist and an ingénieur des Ponts, des Eaux et des Forêts. She helds a PhD in Management Science from Clermont Ferrand I University, and the HdR (habilitation à diriger la recherche) in Management Sciences. She is a researcher at Cemagref since 2002, and joined the ITAP research Unit at Irstea Montpellier, in October 2009. She is working on the delivering of methods devoted to assess social impacts caused by future or past changes along the life cycle of products. She is collaborating with about fifteen social scientists, within the group ELSA-social LCA. Theses are dealing mainly with food product industries, but the methods might be relevant for other fields.

 

Topic: Social Life cycle assessment

catherine.macombe#irstea.fr

Cécile Bessou

Cécile Bessou is an agronomist from ENESAD, Dijon (Master degree, 2001), specialized in resource management and rural development in tropical areas (ENGREF, Montpellier, and MSc at the TU Munich) and doctor in environmental sciences (PhD degree, 2009) from AgroParisTech, Paris. Within the three-year PhD project, she developed her skills in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) while focusing on the modeling of agricultural field emissions with case studies on biofuels.

Since 2010, she has been working at CIRAD within the research unit on perennial cropping systems (UPR 34). The researchers within this team work on both agricultural and environmental issues concerning perennial crops such as Oil Palm, Rubber or Coffee tree. Cécile works on the assessment of oil palm environmental impacts, notably on the development and adaptation of the LCA methodology and agri-ecological indicators for the oil palm. Her main research activities, together with the scientists from the Hortsys research unit, cover inclusion of variability of cropping systems, modeling environmental fluxes and perennial cycles within LCA, and harmonization of methods and results comparability.

Topics : Life cycle assessment, cropping systems, perennial crops, oil palm, agri-ecological indicators, tropics, flux modelling, environment, variability.

Anthony Benoist

Anthony Benoist is a PhD in Energetics from Ecole des Mines ParisTech (2009). He has also a French diploma of General Engineering and a Master’s degree in Process engineering from Ecole Centrale de Paris (2006).

He works since 2010 as a researcher on environmental assessment on a life cycle basis of bioenergy chains, in tropical regions, in the Bioenergy unit of CIRAD, Montpellier. His activities are mainly focused on vegetable oil (for local production of electricity for instance) and wood for energy purposes (carbonization, gasification, pyrolysis, etc).

Topics: Life cycle assessment, bioenergy, oil crops, ligno-cellulosic feedstocks, land-use changes.

More information

Claudine Basset-Mens

Claudine Basset-Mens is an agronomist from Supagro, Montpellier (Master degree, 1997) and doctor in environmental sciences (PhD degree, 2005) from Agro-Campus Ouest school in Rennes, France.

With a 15 years experience at the interface between agriculture and environment, she conducted most of her research on the assessment of environmental impacts for food and farming systems in a wide range of situations (France, New-Zealand, French overseas departments, Morocco, Tunisia, West Africa…) and production systems (animal and crop production systems, horticultural systems). She is currently working in the Hortsys unit in CIRAD on the development and adaptation of the Life Cycle Assessment methodology (LCA) for horticultural production systems in the Tropics, including perennial fruit production systems and short-cycle vegetables production systems. Her main research focus covers: inclusion of variability, environmental fluxes modelling, uncertainty, modelling of perennial cycle within LCA and harmonization of methods and results comparability.

Topics: Life cycle assessment, fruits, perennial crops, short-cycle vegetables, tropics, fluxes, environment, variability, uncertainty, modelling.

Cyril Arnoult (2011 – 2013)

Cyril Arnoult is an agronomist (Master’s degree, 2003) from Montpellier SupAgro. From 2003 to 2009, he took part in launchingEnvilys, , an innovative company dedicated to expertise and developing assessment tools in agri-environment (specialised in water quality management and pollutions diffuses). In 2009, he got a background in LCA, as the company started a new activity in this area with ELSA as a partner. In 2010 and 2011, he works and helps the beginings of Dhomino, a green building start up.
Then he started half time work at Elsa in 2011, for the Ecotech-Sudoe project, and particularly the demonstration of improving energy efficiency of a research team activity through its building improvement and good practices.

Topics : LCA, data base, sustainable building, education, demonstration

arnoult#supagro.inra.fr

Arnaud Hélias

Arnaud Hélias has a background in biological systems modelling and devotes his research activity to the environmental impacts of human activities, within the reference framework of Life Cycle Assessment. He is interested in the modelling of causal relationships, from the determination of pollutant emissions and resource consumption to the quantification of damage caused to ecosystems. The objective is to find a compromise between representativeness and operationality.

Arnaud Hélias, PhD (2003) and habilitation (2016) in process engineering is an INRAE senior scientist. He is the author of about sixty articles and has been in charge of environmental assessment in several collaborative projects (ANR Symbiose, Phosph’OR, WinSeaFuel, GreenAlogOhol, Cost-to-Coast, FUI Salinalgue, Algraal, Ademe Surfact’Alg…). He also holds the Elsa-Pact industrial chair in LCA, is chairman of the scientific and technical council of the GIS Revalim (a scientific group composed by Ademe – INRAE – agricultural and agri-food technical centres, on French agricultural data for LCA), and is an expert for the government on the environmental labelling of food and textile products, expert for the scientific council of IFPEN (French Institute for Petroleum and New Energies), active member of the GLAM initiative (creation of a global life cycle impact assessment method, under the aegis of the United Nations Environment Programme), head of the joint research unit ITAP: Technologies and methods for tomorrow’s agriculture and from 2014 to 2018, leader of the Elsa group.

Topics: Ecodesign, Training, Life cycle assessment, microalgae, seaweed, anaerobic digestion, dynamical modelling, inventory.