Prospective life cycle assessment of a bioprocess design for cultured meat production in hollow fiber bioreactors

Hanna L. Tuomisto; Scott J. Allan; Marianne J. Ellis

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.158051

Prospective life cycle assessment of a bioprocess design for cultured meat production in hollow fiber bioreactors

Hanna L. Tuomisto, Scott J. Allan, Marianne J. Ellis

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34 Citations (SciVal)

Abstract

The aim of cellular agriculture is to use cell-culturing technologies to produce alternatives to agricultural products. Cultured meat is an example of a cellular agriculture product, made by using tissue engineering methods. This study aims to improve the understanding of the potential environmental impacts of cultured meat production by comparing between different bioprocess design scenarios. This was done by carrying out a life cycle assessment (LCA) for a bioprocess system using hollow fiber bioreactors, and utilizing bench-scale experimental data for C2C12 cell proliferation, differentiation and media metabolism. Scenario and sensitivity analyses were used to test the impact of changes in the system design, data sources, and LCA methods on the results to support process design decision making. We compared alternative scenarios to a baseline of C2C12 cells cultured in hollow fiber bioreactors using media consisting of DMEM with serum, for a 16-day proliferation stage and 7-day differentiation stage. The baseline LCA used the average UK electricity mix as the energy source, and heat treatment for wastewater sterilization. The greatest reduction in environmental impacts were achieved with the scenarios using CHO cell metabolism instead of C2C12 cell metabolisim (64–67 % reduction); achieving 128 % cell biomass increase during differentiation instead of no increase (42–56 % reduction); using wind electricity instead of average UK electricity (6–39 % reduction); and adjusting the amino acid use based on experimental data (16–27 % reduction). The use of chemical wastewater treatment instead of heat treatment increased all environmental impacts, except energy demand, by 1–16 %. This study provides valuable insights for the cultured meat field to understand the effects of different process design scenarios on environmental impacts, and therefore provides a framework for deciding where to focus development efforts for improving the environmental performance of the production system.

Original language	English
Article number	158051
Journal	Science of the Total Environment
Volume	851
Issue number	Part 1
Early online date	17 Aug 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.158051
Publication status	Published - 10 Dec 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank the University of Bath for supporting this work and gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Dr. Shaun Reeksting at the University of Bath Material and Chemical Characterisation Facility (MC2) for amino acid detection and analysis via LC-MS. We also thank the 40+ project students for many enjoyable and thought-provoking discussions on bioprocess design over the years, and Jonathan Torralba Torrón for assisting with the experimental work, conducting proliferation experiments with Essential 8™.

Funding Information:
The work carried out at the University of Bath was supported by New Harvest , a 501(c)(3) non-profit research institute (grant # 007 ) and the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Sustainable Chemical Technologies ( EP/L016354/1 ).

Keywords

Carbon footprint
Cell-based meat
Cultivated meat
Environment
Livestock
Novel foods

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Environmental Engineering
Environmental Chemistry
Waste Management and Disposal
Pollution

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.158051Licence: CC BY

Cite this

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abstract = "The aim of cellular agriculture is to use cell-culturing technologies to produce alternatives to agricultural products. Cultured meat is an example of a cellular agriculture product, made by using tissue engineering methods. This study aims to improve the understanding of the potential environmental impacts of cultured meat production by comparing between different bioprocess design scenarios. This was done by carrying out a life cycle assessment (LCA) for a bioprocess system using hollow fiber bioreactors, and utilizing bench-scale experimental data for C2C12 cell proliferation, differentiation and media metabolism. Scenario and sensitivity analyses were used to test the impact of changes in the system design, data sources, and LCA methods on the results to support process design decision making. We compared alternative scenarios to a baseline of C2C12 cells cultured in hollow fiber bioreactors using media consisting of DMEM with serum, for a 16-day proliferation stage and 7-day differentiation stage. The baseline LCA used the average UK electricity mix as the energy source, and heat treatment for wastewater sterilization. The greatest reduction in environmental impacts were achieved with the scenarios using CHO cell metabolism instead of C2C12 cell metabolisim (64–67 % reduction); achieving 128 % cell biomass increase during differentiation instead of no increase (42–56 % reduction); using wind electricity instead of average UK electricity (6–39 % reduction); and adjusting the amino acid use based on experimental data (16–27 % reduction). The use of chemical wastewater treatment instead of heat treatment increased all environmental impacts, except energy demand, by 1–16 %. This study provides valuable insights for the cultured meat field to understand the effects of different process design scenarios on environmental impacts, and therefore provides a framework for deciding where to focus development efforts for improving the environmental performance of the production system.",

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Prospective life cycle assessment of a bioprocess design for cultured meat production in hollow fiber bioreactors

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

UN SDGs

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