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Cradle to Grave Life Cycle Assessment of Mexican Forest Pellets for Residential Heating

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Abstract

This study applies environmental life cycle assessment to quantify and compare the environmental profile of the production and use of wood pellets for residential heating (baseline) and compares the pellet system with two different alternative systems for residential heating in Mexico: (1) the use of LPG heater and (2) one electricity heater powered by three different sources of electricity. The baseline system boundaries include the stages of forest management, transportation, industrial, distribution, wood pellet energy conversion, and ash management. First-hand data and measurements of the emission profiles in the field and laboratory were developed. The functional unit was 1 MJ of thermal energy for residential heating. Environmental impacts were calculated for six impact categories from the ReCiPe midpoint method. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis was performed to evaluate the influence of the allocation criteria (mass and economic) as well as adopting different values for the electricity sources (system’s hotspots). The results obtained for each impact category show a relatively wide range of variation when the five scenarios of the heating systems are compared and analyzed. Electricity heater powered with photovoltaic electricity is better for all the impact categories analyzed. The performance of pellets and LPG is very close, but the pellets have lower impacts on global warming (three times), fossil resource scarcity (four times), and acidification. Therefore, the use of pellets in an efficient boiler is a promising option for residential heating.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Mexican Council for Science and Technology (CONACYT) and the Mexican Secretariat of Energy (Fondo de Sustentabilidad Energética) for supporting this research by “Clúster de biocombustibles sólidos para generación térmica y eléctrica” Project Number (246911).

Funding

This work is a product of research projects funded by the Mexican Council for Science and Technology (CONACYT) and the Mexican Secretariat of Energy (Fondo de Sustentabilidad Energética) Award Number 246911 “Clúster de biocombustibles sólidos para generación térmica y eléctrica.”

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Escuela Nacional de Estudios Superiores, Unidad Morelia, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Antigua Carretera a Pátzcuaro No. 8701, Col. Ex Hacienda de San José de la Huerta, C.P. 58190, Morelia,, Michoacán, México

    Ricardo Musule, José Núñez, Joel Bonales-Revuelta & Carlos. A. García-Bustamante

  2. Laboratorio de Innovación y Evaluación en Bioenergía (LINEB), Grupo de Innovación Ecotecnológica y Bioenergía (GIEB), Instituto de Investigaciones en Ecosistemas y Sustentabilidad (IIES), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Morelia, 58190, México

    Juan C. Vázquez-Tinoco, Omar R. Masera-Cerutti & Víctor M. Ruiz-García

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  1. Ricardo Musule
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  2. José Núñez
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  3. Joel Bonales-Revuelta
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  7. Víctor M. Ruiz-García
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Contributions

Conceptualization: C. G.-B., V. R.-G., and R. M; formal analysis: J. V.-T., R. M., and V. R.-G.; funding acquisition: O. M.-C., V. R.-G., and C. G.-B.; methodology: J. N., J. B.-R., J. V.-T., V. R.-G., R. M., and C. G.-B.; writing—original draft: J. B.-R., R. M., and J. N.; writing—review and editing: V. R.-G., R. M., and J. N.

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Correspondence to Víctor M. Ruiz-García.

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Musule, R., Núñez, J., Bonales-Revuelta, J. et al. Cradle to Grave Life Cycle Assessment of Mexican Forest Pellets for Residential Heating. Bioenerg. Res. 15, 1733–1746 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12155-021-10337-6

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