Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy

, Volume 18, Issue 2, pp 507–516 | Cite as

Water consumption estimates of the biodiesel process in the US

  • Qingshi Tu
  • Mingming Lu
  • Y. Jeffrey Yang
  • Don Scott
Original Paper
First Online:
Received:
Accepted:

Abstract

As a renewable alternative to petroleum diesel, biodiesel has been widely used in the US and the world. However, its potential impact on water resources has not been much evaluated. This study investigates water consumption from the biodiesel process, which includes three stages: soybean irrigation, soybean-to-soybean oil processing, and biodiesel manufacturing, at both national and state levels. Mass-based allocation is performed and water consumption at the three stages is obtained on the basis of million gallons per year and gallon water per gallon biodiesel (gal/gal). The normalized water consumption (water intensity) of the irrigation, oil processing, and biodiesel production stages are 61.78, 0.17, and 0.31 gal/gal, respectively. The resulting total normalized water consumption is 62.26 gal/gal for the biodiesel process which is much lower than those reported in existing literature. It is shown that water consumption from the three stages varies significantly from state to state, which warrants the necessity of state-level water consumption analysis for better decision making in water resources management. Water consumption in potentially water-stressed states is also investigated and results show that currently these states represent 1.6 % of total water consumption associated with biodiesel production, 0.46 % of soybean harvest, and 27.61 % of biodiesel production capacity in the US.

Keywords

Biodiesel Water consumption Irrigation Soybean crushing and processing Water-stressed areas 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

Funding to support the study from the National Risk Management Research Laboratory, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA contract PEG4-52) is acknowledged. Help from the following individuals is also acknowledged: Dr. Gary Knothe and Dr. Michael Haas from the UDSA, Tom O’Conner from NBB, Dr. Ronald Pate (Sandia National Laboratory), Jane Bare (USEPA), William Smith, Klaus Ruhmer and Dr. Ming Chai (the biodiesel industry), and Junsong Zhang (UC).

Disclaimer

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, through its Office of Research and Development, funded and managed, or partially funded and collaborated in, the research described herein. It has been subjected to the Agency administrative review and has been approved for external publication. Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Agency, therefore, no official endorsement should be inferred. Any mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute endorsement or recommendation for use.

Supplementary material

10098_2015_1032_MOESM1_ESM.docx (63 kb)
Supplementary material 1 (DOCX 63 kb)

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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015

Authors and Affiliations

  • Qingshi Tu
    • 1
  • Mingming Lu
    • 1
  • Y. Jeffrey Yang
    • 2
  • Don Scott
    • 3
  1. 1.Department of Biological, Chemical and Environmental EngineeringUniversity of CincinnatiCincinnatiUSA
  2. 2.National Risk Management Research LaboratoriesU.S. Environmental Protection AgencyCincinnatiUSA
  3. 3.Natinoal Biodiesel BoardColumbiaUSA

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