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Life cycle assessment of optimized cassava ethanol production process based on operating data from Guangxi factory in China

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Abstract

In cassava ethanol studies, few studies have combined production data from plants with simulation models, and further investigated the environmental emissions caused by different production processes. In this paper, based on the survey data of cassava ethanol plants in Guangxi, we established an ethanol production process model and conducted a life cycle assessment of the raw meal fermentation (RMF) process and traditional clinker fermentation (CF) process. The impact of fermentation broth alcohol concentration on the environmental emissions of the whole process was also investigated based on the conventional CF process. The results showed that the RMF production process had more advantages than the CF production process in terms of energy savings, with 633 MJ per ton of ethanol and 37.39 kg eq/t ethanol of CO2 reduction. Increasing the alcohol concentration of the fermentation broth facilitated the removal of environmental emissions from the process. All cassava ethanol production models exhibited net energy ratios of no less than 2.74. Of these, the RMF 15% showed the most competitive net energy ratio of 2.97, the highest renewability of 4.52, and the lowest environmental emissions. A detailed analysis of the environmental impacts by the ethanol production phase showed that the distillation section was the critical point for energy saving and emission reduction. Sensitivity analysis showed that fertilizer and natural gas consumption could not be ignored.

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Abbreviations

LCA:

Life cycle assessment

RMF:

Raw meal fermentation

CF:

Clinker fermentation

CCS:

Carbon dioxide capture and storage

GWP:

Global warming potential

AP:

Acidification potential

EP:

Eutrophication potential

ODP:

Ozone layer depletion potential

POCP:

Photochemical ozone generation potential

HTP:

Human toxicity potential

Ne:

Alcohol volume of fermentation broth

E in :

Total net input energy

E inf :

Total non-renewable energy input

E out :

Total net output energy

NEV:

Net energy value

NER:

Net energy ratio

NRnEV:

Net renewable energy value

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Funding

The authors would like to thank National Natural Science Foundation of China for their support of this project (No:52100210).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Beijing Key Laboratory of Lignocellulosic Chemistry, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, 100083, China

    Lulu Zhan, Xi Zhang, Yizhen Zeng, Rui Li & Xianliang Song

  2. Fudan Tyndall Center, Department of Environmental Science & Engineering, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200438, China

    Bin Chen

  3. MOE Engineering Center of Forestry Biomass Materials and Bioenergy, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, 100083, China

    Xianliang Song

Authors
  1. Lulu Zhan
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  2. Xi Zhang
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  3. Yizhen Zeng
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  4. Rui Li
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  6. Bin Chen
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Contributions

All the authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Lulu Zhan, Xi Zhang, Yizhen Zeng, Rui Li, Xianliang Song, and Bin Chen. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Lulu Zhan, and all the authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All the authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Xianliang Song or Bin Chen.

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Zhan, L., Zhang, X., Zeng, Y. et al. Life cycle assessment of optimized cassava ethanol production process based on operating data from Guangxi factory in China. Biomass Conv. Bioref. (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13399-022-03442-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13399-022-03442-9

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