Use of ethanol as a transportation fuel in the United States has grown from 76 dam 3 in 1980 to over 40.1 hm 3 in 2009 d and virtually all of it has been produced from corn. It has been debated whether using corn ethanol results in any energy and greenhouse gas benefits. This issue has been especially critical in the past several years, when indirect effects, such as indirect land use changes, associated with U.S. corn ethanol production are considered in evaluation. In the past three years, modeling of direct and indirect land use changes related to the production of corn ethanol has advanced significantly. Meanwhile, technology improvements in key stages of the ethanol life cycle (such as corn farming and ethanol production) have been made. With updated simulation results of direct and indirect land use changes and observed technology improvements in the past several years, we conducted a life-cycle analysis of ethanol and show that at present and in the near future, using corn ethanol reduces greenhouse gas emission by more than 20%, relative to those of petroleum gasoline. On the other hand, second-generation ethanol could achieve much higher reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. In a broader sense, sound evaluation of U.S. biofuel policies should account for both unanticipated consequences and technology potentials. We maintain that the usefulness of such evaluations is to provide insight into how to prevent unanticipated consequences and how to promote efficient technologies with policy intervention.

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This paper is the summation of several analyses to assess the size and benefi ts of a Billion Ton Bioeconomy, a vision to enable a sustainable market for producing and converting a billion tons of US biomass to bio-based energy, fuels, and products by 2030. Two alternative biomass availability scenarios in 2030, defi ned as the (i) Business-as-usual (598 million dry tons) and (ii) Billion Ton (1042 million dry tons), establish a range of possible outcomes for the future bioeconomy. The biomass utilized in the current (2014) (365 million dry tons) economy is estimated to displace approximately 2.4% of fossil energy consumption and avoid 116 million tons of CO 2 -equivalent (CO 2 e) emissions, whereas the Billion Ton bioeconomy of 2030 could displace 9.5% of fossil energy consumption and avoid as much as 446 million tons of CO 2 equivalent emissions annually. Developing the integrated systems, supply chains, and infrastructure to effi ciently grow, harvest, transport, and convert large quantities of biomass in a sustainable way could support the transition to a low-carbon economy. Bio-based activities in the current (2014) economy are estimated to have directly generated more than $48 billion in revenue and 285 000 jobs. Our estimates show that developing biomass resources and addressing current limitations to achieve a Billion Ton bioeconomy could expand direct bioeconomy revenue by a factor of 5 to contribute nearly $259 billion and 1.1 million jobs to the US economy Keywords: bioeconomy; biomass; bioenergy; biofuels; bioproducts 111Modeling and Analysis: An assessment of the potential impacts resulting from a billion ton bioeconomy JN Rogers et al.

This study summarizes the detailed techno-economic analysis of the ethanol-to-jet (ETJ) process based on two different feedstocks (corn grain and corn stover) at the plant scale of 2000 dry metric tons per day.

A b s t r a c t. The pea seeds were exposed to full-wave rectified sinusoidal magnetic fields. The effects of electromagnetic treatment on seedling growth and chlorophyll contents and have been investigated. Seed were sown after magnetic field treatment according to ISTA under controlled laboratory conditions. The magnetic filed treatment of seeds increased the growth significantly (P<0.05), while the increment in contents of chlorophyll have been found non significant (P<0.05). The shoot length, root length, root dry mass, shoot dry mass, fresh root mass and fresh shoot mass increased up to 140.5, 218.2, and 104, 263.6, 74.5, 91.3%, respectively. The result suggested that magnetic field could be used to enhance the growth in pea plant.K e y w o r d s: