Economic and Sustainability Impacts of Yield and Composition Variation in Bioenergy Crops: Switchgrass ( L.).

Economically viable production of biobased products and fuels requires high-yielding, high-quality, sustainable process-advantaged crops, developed using bioengineering or advanced breeding approaches. Understanding which crop phenotypic traits have the largest impact on biofuel economics and sustainability outcomes is important for the targeted feedstock crop development. Here, we evaluated biomass yield and cell-wall composition traits across a large natural variant population of switchgrass (.

Life Cycle Assessment of Closed-Loop Pumped Storage Hydropower in the United States.

The United States has begun unprecedented efforts to decarbonize all sectors of the economy by 2050, requiring rapid deployment of variable renewable energy technologies and grid-scale energy storage. Pumped storage hydropower (PSH) is an established technology capable of providing grid-scale energy storage and grid resilience. There is limited information about the life cycle of greenhouse gas emissions associated with state-of-the-industry PSH technologies.

Techno-economic analysis and life cycle assessment of a biorefinery utilizing reductive catalytic fractionation.

Reductive catalytic fractionation (RCF) is a promising approach to fractionate lignocellulose and convert lignin to a narrow product slate. To guide research towards commercialization, cost and sustainability must be considered. Here we report a techno-economic analysis (TEA), life cycle assessment (LCA), and air emission analysis of the RCF process, wherein biomass carbohydrates are converted to ethanol and the RCF oil is the lignin-derived product.

Allocation Games: Addressing the Ill-Posed Nature of Allocation in Life-Cycle Inventories.

Allocation is required when a life cycle contains multi-functional processes. One approach to allocation is to partition the embodied resources in proportion to a criterion, such as product mass or cost. Many practitioners apply multiple partitioning criteria to avoid choosing one arbitrarily.

A microfluidic device for presumptive testing of controlled substances.

A simple microfluidic device (MFD) has been developed to perform multiple color and crystal tests for controlled substance analysis. The MFD method uses less sample and reagents and generates less waste than traditional spot plate methods while performing several tests simultaneously. This methodology provides significantly more analytical information for a single sample analysis.