Comparative life cycle assessment of lignocellulosic ethanol production: biochemical versus thermochemical conversion.

Environ Manage

School of Civil Engineering and Ecological Science and Engineering Interdisciplinary Graduate Program, Purdue University, 550 Stadium Mall Drive, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA.

Published: October 2010

Lignocellulosic biomass can be converted into ethanol through either biochemical or thermochemical conversion processes. Biochemical conversion involves hydrolysis and fermentation while thermochemical conversion involves gasification and catalytic synthesis. Even though these routes produce comparable amounts of ethanol and have similar energy efficiency at the plant level, little is known about their relative environmental performance from a life cycle perspective. Especially, the indirect impacts, i.e. emissions and resource consumption associated with the production of various process inputs, are largely neglected in previous studies. This article compiles material and energy flow data from process simulation models to develop life cycle inventory and compares the fossil fuel consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and water consumption of both biomass-to-ethanol production processes. The results are presented in terms of contributions from feedstock, direct, indirect, and co-product credits for four representative biomass feedstocks i.e., wood chips, corn stover, waste paper, and wheat straw. To explore the potentials of the two conversion pathways, different technological scenarios are modeled, including current, 2012 and 2020 technology targets, as well as different production/co-production configurations. The modeling results suggest that biochemical conversion has slightly better performance on greenhouse gas emission and fossil fuel consumption, but that thermochemical conversion has significantly less direct, indirect, and life cycle water consumption. Also, if the thermochemical plant operates as a biorefinery with mixed alcohol co-products separated for chemicals, it has the potential to achieve better performance than biochemical pathway across all environmental impact categories considered due to higher co-product credits associated with chemicals being displaced. The results from this work serve as a starting point for developing full life cycle assessment model that facilitates effective decision-making regarding lignocellulosic ethanol production.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00267-010-9494-2DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

life cycle
20
thermochemical conversion
16
cycle assessment
8
lignocellulosic ethanol
8
ethanol production
8
biochemical conversion
8
conversion involves
8
fossil fuel
8
fuel consumption
8
greenhouse gas
8

Similar Publications

Background: Visual dysfunction, including abnormal stereopsis, is a significant non-motor symptom in Parkinson's disease (PD) that can reduce quality of life and appears early in the disease. Abnormal stereopsis is associated with worsening of bradykinesia and freezing of gait, though the exact pathways linking stereopsis to motor symptoms remain unclear. Furthermore, in PD patients, the pedunculopontine nucleus and laterodorsal tegmental complex play an active role in sensorimotor control, and these areas provide cholinergic projections.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Redox proteomics reveal a role for peroxiredoxinylation in stress protection.

Cell Rep

January 2025

Department of Medicine and Life Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 08003 Barcelona, Spain; Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, 08028 Barcelona, Spain. Electronic address:

The redox state of proteins is essential for their function and guarantees cell fitness. Peroxiredoxins protect cells against oxidative stress, maintain redox homeostasis, act as chaperones, and transmit hydrogen peroxide signals to redox regulators. Despite the profound structural and functional knowledge of peroxiredoxins action, information on how the different functions are concerted is still scarce.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Context: The timing of a woman's final menstrual period (FMP) in relation to her age is considered a valuable indicator of overall health, being associated with cardiovascular, bone health, reproductive, and general mortality outcomes.

Objective: This work aimed to evaluate the relationship between hormones and the "time to FMP" when daily hormone trajectories are characterized by their 1) entropy, and 2) deviation from premenopausal/stable cycle patterns (representing a textbook "gold standard"; GS).

Methods: As part of the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation, urinary luteinizing hormone (LH), follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), estrogen conjugates (E1C), and pregnanediol glucuronide (PDG) were measured daily from a multiracial sample of 549 mid-life women for the duration of one menstrual cycle.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

ANKRD11 binding to cohesin suggests a connection between KBG syndrome and Cornelia de Lange syndrome.

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A

January 2025

Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Biomolecular Assembling and Regulation, Department of Neuroscience, School of Life Sciences, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China.

Ankyrin Repeat Domain-containing Protein 11 () is a causative gene for KBG syndrome, a significant risk factor for Cornelia de Lange syndrome (CdLS), and a highly confident autism spectrum disorder gene. Mutations of lead to developmental abnormalities in multiple organs/tissues including the brain, craniofacial and skeletal bones, and tooth structures with unknown mechanism(s). Here, we find that ANKRD11, via a short peptide fragment in its N-terminal region, binds to the cohesin complex with a high affinity, implicating why mutation can cause CdLS.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Endophytes are bacteria that inhabit host plants for most of their life cycle without causing harm. In the study, 15 endophytic bacteria were isolated from 30 forage Sorghum plants and assessed for various plant growth-promoting (PGP) traits, such as phosphate solubilization, 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid (ACC) deaminase activity, ammonia production, siderophore production, gibberellic acid production, Indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) production, and zinc solubilization. One isolate, JJG_Zn, demonstrated multiple PGP activities and was identified as Enterobacter sp.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!