The success of long-term
sustainable biofuel production on agricultural
lands is still questionable. To this end, we investigated the effects
of crop prices on the changes of agricultural land use for biofuel
canola production in three wheat crop management zones in North Dakota.
The effects of canola hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids (HEFA)
production on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy demand were
investigated along with different allocation methods. The Environmental
Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) and Alternative Fuel Transportation
Optimization Tool (AFTOT) models were used to simulate the life cycle
assessment (LCA) inputs for two key stages of the HEFA pathway: cultivation
and transportation. From the EPIC model results, the increase in canola
price had a significant impact on predicted farmer decisions to displace
food crops with energy crops and particularly on resulting changes
in soil carbon (C). The LCA results suggested that to increase soil
C sequestration, energy canola should be grown in the place of the
fallow whenever possible to guarantee the long-term soil C sustainability
of canola HEFA. Other possible ways to mitigate the GHG emissions
included using anhydrous ammonia as the nitrogen fertilizer for cultivation
and H2 integration (use of HEFA coproducts in H2 production) for HEFA conversion.
Biorefineries will play a critical role in sustainable bioeconomies, but projections of their environmental impacts vary widely. A core challenge with life cycle assessments (LCAs) of biorefineries is that they are often disconnected from biorefinery design, simulation, and techno-economic analysis (TEA). This lack of integration is a barrier to early stage technology and process evaluations, reducing consistency and transparency across sustainability indicators while limiting our understanding of the relative importance of individual factors (e.g., design decisions, greenhouse gas emission accounting procedures), how these factors interact, and trade-offs or synergies with process economics. In this study, we propose a new agile LCA framework, BioSTEAM-LCA, which layers onto BioSTEAM (Biorefinery Simulation and Techno-Economic Analysis Modules, which automates biorefinery design, simulation, and TEA) to characterize the environmental impacts of biorefineries across a landscape of designs, technology performance assumptions, and contexts. Inventory databases and impact assessment methods are integrated to enable flexible user defined LCA system models, and the implications of uncertainties throughout the production system are characterized via Monte Carlo simulation. To demonstrate the capabilities of BioSTEAM-LCA, we present a case study for sugarcane ethanol production. Overall, BioSTEAM-LCA enables computationally efficient, agile gate-to-gate LCA to evaluate biorefinery processes, the production of candidate biofuels and bioproducts, and trade-offs among productivity, economics, and environmental impacts under uncertainty.
This tutorial review synthesizes literature on sustainability analyses to introduce quantitative sustainable design (QSD) for technology research, development, and deployment.
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