A limited LCA comparing large- and small-scale production of rape methyl ester (RME) under Swedish conditions

Bernesson, Sven; Nilsson, Daniel; Hansson, Per‐Anders

doi:10.1016/j.biombioe.2003.10.003

Cited by 119 publications

(94 citation statements)

References 4 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Soybean-based biodiesel production 1 Background, aim and scope Life cycle assessment (LCA) of biofuel production requires a country-specific approach due to the significant importance of local conditions in estimating the energy consumption and the greenhouse gas emissions of the system. Some efforts have been put worldwide to determine countryspecific and raw-material-specific biofuels environmental impact (RFA 2008;Reijnders and Huijbregts 2008;Russi 2008;Zah et al 2007;CONCAWE-EUCAR-JRC 2007;Smith et al 2007;Farrell et al 2006;Gnansounou and Dauriat 2005;VIEWLS 2005;Bernesson et al 2004;Elsayed et al 2003;ADEME 2002;GM-LBST 2002;Sheehan et al 1998). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Life cycle assessment of soybean-based biodiesel in Argentina for export

Panichelli

Dauriat²,

Gnansounou

2008

Int J Life Cycle Assess

155

113

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background, aim and scope Regional specificities are a key factor when analyzing the environmental impact of a biofuel pathway through a life cycle assessment (LCA). Due to different energy mixes, transport distances, agricultural practices and land use changes, results can significantly vary from one country to another. The Republic of Argentina is the first exporter of soybean oil and meal and the third largest soybean producer in the world, and therefore, soybean-based biodiesel production is expected to significantly increase in the near future, mostly for exportation. Moreover, Argentinean biodiesel producers will need to evaluate the environmental performances of their product in order to comply with sustainability criteria being developed. However, because of regional specificities, the environmental performances of this biofuel pathway can be expected to be different from those obtained for other countries and feedstocks previously studied. This work aims at analyzing the environmental impact of soybean-based biodiesel production in Argentina for export. The relevant impact categories account for the primary non-renewable energy consumption (CED), the global warming potential (GWP), the eutrophication potential (EP), the acidification potential (AP), the terrestrial ecotoxicity (TE), the aquatic ecotoxicity (AE), the human toxicity (HT) and land use competition (LU). The paper tackles the feedstock and country specificities in biodiesel production by comparing the results of soybean-based biodiesel in Argentina with other reference cases. Emphasis is put on explaining the factors that contribute most to the final results and the regional specificities that lead to different results for each biodiesel pathway. Materials and methods The Argentinean (AR) biodiesel pathway was modelled through an LCA and was compared with reference cases available in the ecoinvent® 2.01 database, namely, soybean-based biodiesel production in Brazil (BR) and the United States (US), rapeseed-based biodiesel production in the European Union (EU) and Switzerland (CH) and palm-oil-based biodiesel production in Malaysia (MY). In all cases, the systems were modelled from feedstock production to biodiesel use as B100 in a 28 t truck in CH. Furthermore, biodiesel pathways were compared with fossil low-sulphur diesel produced and used in CH. The LCA was performed according to the ISO standards. The life cycle inventory and the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) were performed in Excel spreadsheets using the ecoinvent® 2.01 database. The cumulative energy demand (CED) and the GWP were estimated through the CED for fossil and nuclear energy and the IPCC 2001 (climate change) LCIA methods, respectively. Other impact categories were assessed according to CML 2001, as implemented in ecoinvent. As the product is a fuel for transportation (service), the system was defined for one vehicle kilometre (functional unit) and was divided into seven unit processes, namely, agricultural phase, soybean oil extraction and refining, transesteri...

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Life cycle assessment of soybean-based biodiesel in Argentina for export

Panichelli

Dauriat²,

Gnansounou

2008

Int J Life Cycle Assess

155

113

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Transesterification is a process where an alcohol, typically methanol, is replacing glycerine in the vegetable oil, in the presence of a catalyst [17]. The result of the chemical reaction is a Fatty Acid Methyl Ester (FAME)-Biodiesel.…”

Section: Biodieselmentioning

confidence: 99%

Limits to biofuels

Johansson

2013

EPJ Web of Conferences

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Summary. -Biofuel production is dependent upon agriculture and forestry systems, and the expectations of future biofuel potential are high. A study of the global food production and biofuel production from edible crops implies that biofuel produced from edible parts of crops lead to a global deficit of food. This is rather well known, which is why there is a strong urge to develop biofuel systems that make use of residues or products from forest to eliminate competition with food production. However, biofuel from agro-residues still depend upon the crop production system, and there are many parameters to deal with in order to investigate the sustainability of biofuel production. There is a theoretical limit to how much biofuel can be achieved globally from agro-residues and this amounts to approximately one third of todays' use of fossil fuels in the transport sector. In reality this theoretical potential may be eliminated by the energy use in the biomass-conversion technologies and production systems, depending on what type of assessment method is used. By surveying existing studies on biofuel conversion the theoretical limit of biofuels from 2010 years' agricultural production was found to be either non-existent due to energy consumption in the conversion process, or up to 2-6000 TWh (biogas from residues and waste and ethanol from woody biomass) in the more optimistic cases.

show abstract

“…This substitution approach is also considered in other works (e.g. Bernesson et al, 2004;JEC, 2007;Lechón et al, 2009;Soimakallio et al, 2009). …”

Section: Life-cycle Modeling and Inventory Incorporating Uncertainty mentioning

confidence: 99%

Uncertainty Analysis of the Life-Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Energy Renewability of Biofuels

Malça¹,

Freire²

2011

Environmental Impact of Biofuels

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A limited LCA comparing large- and small-scale production of rape methyl ester (RME) under Swedish conditions

Cited by 119 publications

References 4 publications

Life cycle assessment of soybean-based biodiesel in Argentina for export

Life cycle assessment of soybean-based biodiesel in Argentina for export

Limits to biofuels

Uncertainty Analysis of the Life-Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Energy Renewability of Biofuels

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About