Assessment and modeling of energy flow and environmental impacts of cookie production by life cycle assessment approach

In this study, energy consumption and environmental emissions of cookie production in Guilan Province of Iran was investigated. The required information was collected using questionnaires and interviews from 30 factories of cookie production. Equivalent energies of inputs and outputs were calculated based on the standardized energy coefficients. The results of this study showed that 30.50 MJ of energy was consumed for production of one kilogram of cookie in which the highest share of energy consumption was allocated to natural gas with 17.09 MJ kg-1. Based on life cycle assessment (LCA) results, global warming (GW) index was calculated as 3.73 kg CO2 eq. per kilogram of produced cookie which about 51 percent of that was related to combustion of natural gas consumed in cooking process. Finally, the modeling of amount of yield and environmental impacts was conducted based on two models of artificial neural network (ANN) and adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS). The results showed that ANFIS was capable of predicting yield with more accuracy and less error.