Life Cycle Assessment for Black Soldier Fly Larvae Dried Production v1

Background: Hermetia illucens L. has gained popularity in recent years as a potential ecologically friendly response to both the present and potential future food/feed crisis. The larvae of H. illucensL., also known as black soldier fly larvae (BSFL), is an alternative solution to tackle the issue of organic waste bioconversion. However, understanding the environmental loads associated with biowaste bioconversion using BSFL to produce dried BSFL is a pivotal point to keep the environment sustainable. This study reported a life cycle assessment (LCA) of the biowaste bioconversion process of BSFL and determined the environmental impact analysis to make recommendations for modifications to lessen environmental consequences. Methods: The data used was starting from biowaste production, biowaste bioconversion, prepupa production; and BSFL frass production. All these system productions were evaluated using the OpenLCA 1.11 withTRACI 2.1 methods based on a gate-to-gate approach.The system boundary of the dried larva production system is designed for both the processing and production of one cycle of BSFL. Further, five environmental impact categories, namely global warming potential (GWP), acidification (AC), terrestrial eutrophication (TE), fossil fuel depletion (FFE), and eco-toxicity (ET) were determined. The study was conducted at the PT Biomagg Sinergi Internasional, Depok, West Java, Indonesia. Results: Based on the results of the study, the impact values of GWP, AC, TE, FFE, and ET, per 100 kg of BSFL dried production werewas6.687 kg CO2eq; 0.029 kg SO2-eq; 0.092 kg N-eq; 16.732 MJ surplus; 121.231 CTUe, respectively. Production of prepupa had the highest hotspots in these emissions, followed by the production of dried BSFL. Conclusions. Efforts to reduce environmental impacts that can be done are by implementing an integrated rearing system for the utilization of substrate from a single type of known substrate for BSFL and using alternative drying methods for BSFL dried production.