Definition and application of ethanol equivalent: Sustainability performance metrics for biomass conversion to carbon-based fuels and chemicals

Solvents and sustainable chemistry

“…The second part makes it clear that the benefits of modern chemistry and chemical products should be made available to all communities . Horváth and co-workers have described sustainable chemistry as: resources including energy should be used at a rate at which they can be replaced naturally and the generation of wastes cannot be faster than the rate of their remediation [ 5 ]. However, it is only by commercial production that chemical products impact upon people's lives or the environment.…”

Challenges and Directions for Green Chemical Engineering—Role of Nanoscale Materials

“…54 The sustainability of green chemicals, materials, and processes could be secured by using resources, including energy, at a rate at which they can be replaced naturally, and the generation of associated wastes should not be faster than the rate of their remediation. 55 Therefore, companies should use sustainable chemistry, 56 ensure reliable biomass production by owning enough land to produce the required amount of biomass, and develop water management systems 57 for their production to avoid flooding or drought. If climate change threatens conventional agricultural practices, sustainable agricultural technologies have to be developed, 58 such as intensification and hydroponics.…”

Conservative evolution and industrial metabolism in Green Chemistry

“…To improve the evaluation of biomass utilization from a sustainability point of view, Horváth and co-workers proposed a new definition of sustainability using two fundamental evolutionary principles and mechanisms of Nature as follows (i) "resources including energy should be used at a rate at which they can be replaced naturally" and (ii) "the generation of waste cannot be faster than the rate of their remediation". 132 It should be emphasized that this novel approach addresses the changes in time (or the kinetics required to reach sustainable equilibria) and offered the opportunity to calculate the upper limits of sustainability per capita (or the parameters of sustainable equilibria). To calculate the sustainability of fuels (gasoline and jet fuels) and basic chemicals (ethylene, propylene, benzene, etc.)…”

“…a new metric, the ethanol equivalent (EE) was introduced and used to calculate the land requirements of the biomass-based production of the corresponding products. 132 As a subsequent development of this theory, three indicators, i.e. the sustainability value of the resource replacement (SV rep ), the sustainability value of the fate of the waste (SV waste ), and the sustainability indicator (SUS ind ) were defined as the sustainability metrics of carbon-based chemicals.…”