Life cycle assessment of milk powder for chocolate manufacturing: Evaluating the impacts of energy, logistics, and drying technologies
Food and Bioproducts Processing, cilt.159, ss.612-626, 2026 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 159
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Doi Numarası: 10.1016/j.fbp.2026.07.027
- Dergi Adı: Food and Bioproducts Processing
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus, Compendex, Food Science & Technology Abstracts, INSPEC, Academic Search Ultimate (EBSCO)
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.612-626
- Anahtar Kelimeler: Chocolate, Drying, Life cycle assessment, Milk powder, Sustainability
- Eskişehir Osmangazi Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
Milk powder is an energy-intensive dairy commodity and a highly critical functional ingredient in the global chocolate industry. Existing life cycle assessments (LCAs) predominantly treat milk powder manufacturing as a generic, aggregated process, failing to differentiate the environmental trade-offs between specific drying technologies or capture the realities of downstream supplier-to-customer logistics. Addressing this critical gap, this study presents a first-of-its-kind, supplier-specific LCA that explicitly quantifies the structural interplay between alternative drying routes and downstream transport distances within a real-world dairy-confectionery framework in Türkiye. Following ISO 14040/14044 standards, a cradle-to-factory-gate-plus-delivery approach was applied to a functional unit of 1 kg of product, comparing spray-dried skim, spray-dried full-fat, and drum-dried full-fat milk powders. Primary industrial foreground data were coupled with Ecoinvent and Agri-footprint databases, and impacts were characterized using the ReCiPe 2016 Midpoint (H) method. Results reveal a dual-control environmental structure. Upstream raw milk production overwhelmingly dictates land use (>95%), marine eutrophication (>95%), and terrestrial acidification, whereas energy-intensive industrial evaporation and drying govern fossil resource scarcity and fine particulate matter formation. Crucially, the technological choice between spray and drum drying yielded marginal differences (<3%) in global warming potential (GWP). Conversely, sensitivity analyses demonstrated that extending downstream transport distances from a local (100 km) to a long-distance (900 km) supplier escalated climate and toxicity impacts by over 30%, exposing logistics as a structurally dominant sustainability lever. The findings provide clear evidence that meaningful environmental improvements in milk powder systems require a holistic approach prioritizing farm-level efficiency, energy decarbonization, and geographically proximate sourcing, rather than solely focusing on drying equipment substitution.