Environmental impacts of biogas deployment – Part I: life cycle inventory for evaluation of production process emissions to air

Poeschl, Martina; Ward, Shane; Owende, Philip

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2011.10.039

Cited by 172 publications

(84 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…According to several studies, biomethane production represents a viable alternative to fossil fuels, in particular for transports. In particular, a GHG saving when biomethane is used for transports was reported by Poeschl et al [71,101,102] (1.15 kgCO 2 eq/kg biomethane) and by Power and Murphy [115] (between 0.017 kg/MJ and 0.02 kg/MJ depending on the feedstock). The GHG performance of the different crop-based biomethane systems was calculated by 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 14 Börjesson et al [33]: the results range from 22 to 47 kgCO 2 eq/GJ biomethane when credit of increased soil organic carbon (SOC) content was excluded, and from −2 to 45 kgCO 2 eq/GJ biomethane when it was included.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…This is possible because, being the slurries and manure a waste of other activities, no environmental load is associated with them; moreover their digestion was frequently associated with credits for the avoided emissions of their traditional management in open tanks [29,58,59,60,64,100]. Nevertheless, the environmental performance of AD plants fed with animal effluents (above all the liquid ones, such as pig slurry) strongly depends on the transport distances, that should be minimized [29,101,102].…”

Section: Feedstockmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Agricultural anaerobic digestion plants: What LCA studies pointed out and what can be done to make them more environmentally sustainable

et al. 2016

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Anaerobic Digestion (AD) has been recognized as a viable solution to produce renewable energy and to reduce global warming especially when secondary feedstock and/or wastes are used. Several LCA studies analysed the environmental performances of biogas production systems. The results of this review highlight that the goal, scope, life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methodology, feedstocks and geographical regions covered by the studies vary widely. Most studies are based in Europe, several in China and few in South and North America and in Africa. To better highlight how the choices on the feeding mix, the digestate storage, the surplus heat valorisation as well as the plant size can affect the environmental performances of agricultural AD plants four plants have been analyzed in this study. The results suggest that the energy crops production and the operation of anaerobic digesters, including digestate emission from open tanks, are the main contributors to the impacts from biogas electricity. This entails that it is environmentally better to have smaller plants using slurry and waste rather than bigger plants fed with energy crops. Recovering heat waste as well as covering of digestate tank would improve significantly the environmental sustainability of biogas electricity, and particularly the global warming category. We are pleased to enclose the revised version of our original manuscript of our paper entitled "Agricultural anaerobic digestion plants: What LCA studies pointed out and what can be done to make them more environmentally sustainable" which can hopefully be published in Applied Energy.Many thanks to the reviewers for their comments; they helped us to improve the manuscript.We hope that the manuscript in the revised form is appropriate for publication in Applied Energy.On behalf of all the Authors, as corresponding Author, yours sincerely, Cover Letter Title: Agricultural anaerobic digestion plants: What LCA studies pointed out and what can be done to make them more sustainable Dear Editor, we would like to thank you for the reviewers' comments. We are grateful to all the reviewers for devoting their time to review our manuscript. As you can see, we have taken most of them into consideration to modify the paper. We hope that the paper in this current revised version can be accepted for publication. Below, we enclose an explanation of how we have addressed the questions raised. Reviewer #1The manuscript is working on the review of the environmental impacts of biogas production. It includes good results, an interesting methodology, and related to the scope of this Journal. I suggest to accept it after some minor revisions. Thank you for your positive comments and for useful suggestions.The authors should write about the difference between their study and the following research: * Hijazi, O., Munro, S., Zerhusen, B. and Effenberger, M., 2016. Review of life cycle assessment for biogas production in Europe. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 54, 1291-300. Done, we specified in the int...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Feedstockmentioning

confidence: 99%

Agricultural anaerobic digestion plants: What LCA studies pointed out and what can be done to make them more environmentally sustainable

et al. 2016

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“…In several Polsch et al studies [11,20,21], the authors conducted an attributional LCA of multiple biogas production and utilization pathways against specific base scenarios. Different approaches were used to quantify the effects of a number of parameters, including: (i) single feedstock digestion; (ii) co-digestion of multiple feedstocks, for example combining energy crops with manure in small (<500 kWel) and large-scale (>500 kWel) biogas plants; (iii) different biogas utilization pathways; and (iv) digestate management options.…”

Section: Life Cycle Assessment (Lca) Applied To Biogas Plantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental Sustainability and Economic Benefits of Dairy Farm Biogas Energy Production: A Case Study in Umbria

et al. 2014

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Accelerating demand to reduce the environmental impact of fossil fuels has been driving widespread attention to renewable fuels, such as biogas. In fact, in the last decade numerous policy guidelines and laws regarding energy, the environment and agriculture have been issued to encourage the use of animal sewage as a raw material for the production of biogas. The production of energy from biogas in a dairy farm can provide a good opportunity for sustainable rural development, augmenting the farm's income from traditional sources and helping to reduce the overall environmental impact of the energy sector. This paper investigates the trade-off between the environmental and economic benefits of an agro-energy farm in the Umbria region of Italy that employs livestock sewage and manure, dedicated energy crops (corn and triticale silage) and olive waste. The environmental analysis was performed using the LCA methodology, while the economic investigation was carried out by reconstructing the economic balance of the agro-energetic supply chain based on the budgets of each activity performed. The LCA results show, on the one hand, the predominant weight of producing dedicated crops compared to all other processes in the supply chain and, on the other hand, a significant reduction in environmental impact compared to that caused by energy production from fossil fuels. Economic analysis revealed that the results depend significantly on what rate per kWh the government incentives guarantee to agricultural producers of renewable energy.

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“…Considering the rapid increase in household scale biogas digester construction and the optimistic expectations about their global warming abatement potential by decision makers, a reliable and systematic account of energy and GHG emission for rural household biogas energy projects has recently become of supreme importance. Previous studies on household biogas digesters were mainly based on the processed life cycle analysis, which could only take a direct or a small part of the indirect energy demands and emissions into account [21][22][23][24][25][26][27]. For example, [3] estimated that in China biogas provided 832.48 PJ of energy for households and curtailed 7.32 × 10 7 t CO 2 -eq of GHGs annually.…”

Section: Yearmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy and GHG Analysis of Rural Household Biogas Systems in China

Zhang

Wang

2014

Energies

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Abstract:The Chinese government has taken great efforts to popularize rural household scale biogas digesters, since they are regarded as an effective approach to address energy shortage issues in rural areas and as a potential way of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Focusing on a typical rural household biogas system, the aim of this study is to systematically quantify its total direct and indirect energy, concentrating on non-renewable energy and the associated GHG emission cost over the entire life cycle to understand its net dynamic benefits. The results show that the total energetic cost for biogas output is 2.19 J/J, of which 0.56 J is from non-renewable energy sources and the GHG emission cost is 4.54 × 10 −5 g CO 2 -equivalent (CO 2 -eq), with respect to its design life cycle of 20 years. Correspondingly, a net non-renewable energy saving of 9.89 × 10 10 J and GHG emission reduction of 50.45 t CO 2 -eq can be obtained considering the coal substitution and manure disposal. However, it must be run for at least 10 and 3 years, to obtain positive net non-renewable energy savings and GHG emission reduction benefits, respectively. These results have policy implications for development orientation, follow-up services, program management and even national financial subsidy methods.

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Environmental impacts of biogas deployment – Part I: life cycle inventory for evaluation of production process emissions to air

Cited by 172 publications

References 18 publications

Agricultural anaerobic digestion plants: What LCA studies pointed out and what can be done to make them more environmentally sustainable

Agricultural anaerobic digestion plants: What LCA studies pointed out and what can be done to make them more environmentally sustainable

Environmental Sustainability and Economic Benefits of Dairy Farm Biogas Energy Production: A Case Study in Umbria

Energy and GHG Analysis of Rural Household Biogas Systems in China

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