A review on beet sugar industry with a focus on implementation of waste-to-energy strategy for power supply

Highlights: • Latest situation of sugar and sugar beet cultivation around the world was reviewed. • Current global situation of beet sugar industry was reviewed. • Environmental impacts of using waste-oriented electricity in beet sugar factories were assessed. • Implementing renewable bioelectricity in sugar factories could reduce environmental burdens. -- Abstract: Among the various agri-food sub-sectors, sugar production is specifically ranked among the top energy-intensive industries in which massive amounts of various fossil energy carriers are used during sugar beet processing jeopardizing the environmental sustainability of the whole industry. Among the various solutions introduced to date, using renewable energies to supply power to this industry could be regarded as a promising approach to reduce the environmental concerns faced by this sector. In such context, energy from waste could be the most favorable alternative to meet power requirements of the industry. This review paper starts with reviewing the latest situation of sugar production and sugar beet cultivation around the world. Principal sugar beet processing stages as well as different waste-to-energy (WTE) techniques are also reviewed and discussed. In order to evaluate the impacts of the proposed solution, i.e., WTE for power generation in beet sugar industry, two factories located in Iran were considered as case studies and subsequently, the implementation of a kind of waste-oriented electricity as an alternative to fossil-based electricity (conventionally consumed in the factories) was investigated. Moreover, the environmental hotspots in the sugar beet processing factories were determined for further possible improvements. Overall, it was found out that implementing renewable bioelectricity in the studied sugar factories could considerably reduce the environmental burdens; i.e., 14.11–15.41% in human health, 1.49–1.54% in ecosystem quality, 4–4.4% in climate change, and 4.18–4.87% in resources damage categories.