Abstract
Indonesia is one of the countries worldwide that consume significant fertilizer for agricultural activities. A total of 6.27 Mt of urea fertilizer per annum was consumed. Therefore, some fertilizer plants operate in Indonesia and one of the plants is managed by PT Pupuk Kujang. The plant is located at Cikampek West Java and has two production lanes where each lane has a production capacity of 570,000 t urea annually. This study is aimed to identify the potential impact and environmental hotspots of a fertilizer plant. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method was applied and using Centrum Voor Milieuwetenschappen Impact Assessment (CML-IA) analysis for life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). Three main categories were analysed, namely climate change, acidification, and eutrophication. The functional unit was the potential environmental impacts generated by 50 kg of urea fertilizer production. The productions (ammonia, and urea) and distribution process were considered as the system boundary. Seven production processes occurred in the urea plant including synthesizing, purification, concentration, prilling, recovery, process condensate, and bagging process. The results showed that the 50 kg of urea fertilizer emitted 4.73 kg CO2-eq, 0.03 kg SO2-eq, and 0.015 kg PO4-eq and the environmental hotspots were caused by the consumption of electricity from state-owned company (31.5 %), polypropylene content in the fertilizer packaging (0.74 %), and transportation (1.48 %). These environmental hotspots provided an opportunity for the renewable energy introduction and the application of a packaging reuse program to reduce those potential environmental impacts. These strategies improved the environmental performance of PT Pupuk Kujang as a urea fertilizer producer.
