Air Quality and Health Impacts of an Aviation Biofuel Supply Chain Using Forest Residue in the Northwestern United States

Abstract

Forest residue is a major potential feedstock for second-generation biofuel; however, little knowledge exists about the environmental impacts of the development and production of biofuel from such a feedstock. Using a high-resolution regional air quality model, we estimate the air quality impacts of a forest residue based aviation biofuel supply chain scenario in the Pacific Northwestern United States. Using two potential supply chain regions, we find that biomass and biofuel hauling activities will add <1% of vehicle miles traveled to existing traffic, but the biorefineries will add significant local sources of NO and CO. In the biofuel production scenario, the regional average increase in the pollutant concentration is small, but 8-hr maximum summer time O can increase by 1-2 ppb and 24-hr average maximum PM by 2 μg/m. The alternate scenario of slash pile burning increased the multiday average PM by 2-5 μg/m during a winter simulation. Using BenMAP, a health impact assessment tool, we show that avoiding slash pile burning results in a decrease in premature mortality as well as several other nonfatal and minor health effects. In general, we show that most air quality and health benefits result primarily from avoided slash pile burning emissions.

PM2.5-Related Health Economic Benefits Evaluation Based on Air Improvement Action Plan in Wuhan City, Middle China

“…Then, the air quality map layers in the above scenarios were matched with the map layer of the exposed population data. Furthermore, the health impact function is used to calculate the health benefits due to changes in pollutant concentration [28]. Since death is the most significant end point of various health effects related to PM 2.5 pollution, this paper chooses all-cause death as the end point of health effects [29,30].…”

Bio-aviation Fuel: A Comprehensive Review and Analysis of the Supply Chain Components

“…Their results showed the ethanol-to-jet processing of eucalyptus residues or sugarcane residues as the most economically feasible. Contrary to studies focusing on economics, Ravi et al (2018) studied the environmental impacts of a forest residue-based BAF supply chain in the Pacific Northwest of USA. Using a regional air quality model with high-resolution, their results showed that the biorefineries can be a substantial local source of NO x and CO but regionally the increase is insignificant.…”

Integration of a Coupled Fire-Atmosphere Model Into a Regional Air Quality Forecasting System for Wildfire Events

“…However, in 2020, AIRPACT was updated with the Fire Information System with BlueSky Pipeline. The evolution of the operational AIRPACT forecast methodology is documented in the following papers (Vaughan et al, 2004;Chen et al, 2008;Herron-Thorpe et al, 2014;Ravi et al, 2018Ravi et al, , 2019 and at http://www.lar.wsu.edu/airpact.…”