The Amazon Region has a huge amount of biomass resources. The Brazilian Amazon comprises an area larger than 5 million km2, which represents 61% of the Brazilian territory. The Brazilian northern region produces 72.45% of the produced round wood in Brazil; the State of Pará shares 55.47% of that production. Generally, in Amazon region the lumbers get into the forest to select the logs to being cut. Some years later they return again to the same area to harvest again, and the interval time reduces each year. The Amazon region contained 833 sawmills in 1998. These sawmills were located mainly in the Amazon estuary (71%). These wood producers share 1.3 million cubic meters of wood logs (5% of production Amazon). The present work estimated the carbon balance of sawmills in the Amazon River estuary. A life cycle analysis was developed to estimate the carbon balance of the studied sawmills. The study was focused on the wood products considering the process used in small Amazonian communities. There is a well-defined path of the natural resource (biomass/wood) such as: forestry, transportation of biomass, transformation (business/timber) / processes, generation and use of wastes, transport of processed timber, marketing. The energy balance was also analyzed through the flow (inputs and outputs) of wood and carbon during the cycle. A numerical model was developed to simulate the flow of carbon, energy, wood and area affected by exploitation. This work developed a specific model for the evaluation of the carbon flow, the environmental impact assessment was reached, where it shown a positive value, a carbon capture about 55 tCO2/month, even with a low production efficiency system, around 36%. The results show that the current operating system does not pollute but could be improved to achieve higher efficiency in the production process. The waste generated was approximately 64% of the volume of wood entering the mill, its application could be managed to generate approximately 1240 kilowatts of electricity monthly.
|
