Life Cycle Analysis of Farmed Shrimp of the Species Litopenaeus Vannamei in the Province of Guayas

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to quantify the environmental performance of the Litopenaus Vannamei shrimp, defining the limits of the "Cradle to the door", as a functional unit 1 kg of packed frozen shrimp was established, through the application of the Life Cycle Analysis methodology, which allows to identify the most relevant environmental aspects of the production system in the province of Guayas.

The inventory analysis was carried out through the quantification of inputs and outputs in the shrimp processing stages, whose data were processed using the Open LCA software. Among the categories of impacts to be studied are Climate Change, freshwater eutrophication and terrestrial acidification.

The results indicate that the main stages responsible for the impact are shrimp farming with a contribution of 58.26%, while the production of feed for shrimp feed on the farm represents 80.01% of CO2 emissions, which are mostly associated with the consumption of feed and fossil fuels.

Among the improvement alternatives to mitigate the environmental impact during shrimp production is the reformulation of the composition of the balance, optimization of the consumption of balancing through automatic feeders and the implementation of renewable energy systems for water pumping.