Background, aim, and scope This paper presents the lifecycle assessment (LCA) of fuel ethanol, as 100% of the vehicle fuel, from sugarcane in Brazil. The functional unit is 10,000 km run in an urban area by a car with a 1,600-cm 3 engine running on fuel hydrated ethanol, and the resulting reference flow is 1,000 kg of ethanol. The product system includes agricultural and industrial activities, distribution, cogeneration of electricity and steam, ethanol use during car driving, and industrial by-products recycling to irrigate sugarcane fields. The use of sugarcane by the ethanol agribusiness is one of the foremost financial resources for the economy of the Brazilian rural area, which occupies extensive areas and provides farreaching potentials for renewable fuel production. But, there are environmental impacts during the fuel ethanol lifecycle, which this paper intents to analyze, including addressing the main activities responsible for such impacts and indicating some suggestions to minimize the impacts. Materials and methodsThis study is classified as an applied quantitative research, and the technical procedure to achieve the exploratory goal is based on bibliographic revision, documental research, primary data collection, and study cases at sugarcane farms and fuel ethanol industries in the northeast of São Paulo State, Brazil. The methodological structure for this LCA study is in agreement with the International Standardization Organization, and the method used is the Environmental Design of Industrial Products. The lifecycle impact assessment (LCIA) covers the following emission-related impact categories: global warming, ozone formation, acidification, nutrient enrichment, ecotoxicity, and human toxicity. Results and discussion The results of the fuel ethanol LCI demonstrate that even though alcohol is considered a renewable fuel because it comes from biomass (sugarcane), it uses a high quantity and diversity of nonrenewable resources over its lifecycle. The input of renewable resources is also high mainly because of the water consumption in the industrial phases, due to the sugarcane washing process. During the lifecycle of alcohol, there is a surplus of electric energy due to the cogeneration activity. Another focus point is the quantity of emissions to the atmosphere and the diversity of the substances emitted. Harvesting is the unit process that contributes most to global warming. For photochemical ozone formation, harvesting is also the activity with the strongest contributions due to the burning in harvesting and the emissions from using diesel fuel. The acidification impact potential is mostly due to the NOx emitted by the combustion of ethanol during use, on account of the sulfuric acid use in the industrial process and because of the NOx emitted by the burning in harvesting. The main consequence of the intensive use of fertilizers to the field is the high nutrient enrichment impact potential associated with this activity.
ResumoParticle Image Velocimetry (PIV) é uma técnica recente de medição não-intrusiva de campos de velocidades em escoamentos. Neste trabalho, foi desenvolvido um equipamento de medição com características similares aos convencionais, porém com algumas características exclusivas, como o método óptico de aquisição de imagens e a calibração de coordenadas, que resultaram na utilização de uma única câmera convencional para obtenção de imagens e dados tridimensionais em escoamentos de baixa turbulência, proporcionando significativa economia na implantação. Foi desenvolvido um software específico e os resultados consistem em campos de velocidades tridimensionais. A aplicação destinou-se à medição de velocidades na superfície do escoamento em um tanque de grades oscilantes de forma a correlacionar a turbulência superficial com a capacidade de reaeração dos corpos da água.Palavras-chave: PIV, velocimetria por imagens de partículas, turbulência, métodos ópticos de medição, reaeração. AbstractParticle Image Velocimetry (PIV) is a recent technique of flow measurement labeled as a non-intrusive methodology. The system developed in this paper used principles similar to conventional systems including some exclusive characteristics as the optical method of image acquisition and the calibration process of the coordinate system. The measurement system, resulted from these characteristics, uses a single conventional digital video camera to obtain three-dimensional data in low turbulence flow, which provided significant economy in the system implantation. A specific software was developed and the results consist of fields of three-dimensional velocities obtained from the digital video file. The application was destined to the measurement of velocities on the flow surface in a tank of oscillating grids in order to correlate the surface turbulence with the rearation capacity of the bodies of water.
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