Train. REFINERY. OPEARTION. Fuel Conversion. Corn Stover. Corn Stover. Densified Corn Stover ... (St. Louis Southwestern,. Missouri Pacific and Atchison,. Topeka & Santa Fe Railway and. Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific. Railroad.).
Uncertainties in Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Advanced Biomass Feedstock Logistics Supply Chains Long Nguyen1, Kara G. Cafferty2, Erin M. Searcy2 and Sabrina Spatari1 1Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering, Drexel University 2Department of Biofuels and Renewable Energy Technologies, Idaho National Laboratory Introduction
Life Cycle Inventory Model System Boundary of Corn Stover to Ethanol Supply and Logistics System
Commodity systems have been proposed and designed to deliver quality-controlled biomass feedstocks at preprocessing “depots”.
Energy
Bailing
Energy
Combine Harvest/CH
Preprocessing depots densify and stabilize the biomass prior to long-distance transport and delivery to centralized biorefineries. To access available biomass resources from areas with varying yields To improve the feedstock logistics of lignocellulosic biofuels The logistics of biomass commodity supply chains could introduce spatially variable environmental impacts
RAW MATERIALS FROM FIELDS
FEEDSTOCK PRODUCTION Production/Harvest/ Corn feedstock Collection/Short-Term Storage
Operations at fields Operations at depots Transportation
Objective Evaluate the spatial variability of life cycle environmental impacts owing to characteristics along the biomass feedstock supply chain. The incur variability as a result of the quantity of biomass harvested, collected, stored, moved, and preprocessed prior to long-distance transport to a centralized biorefinery.
REFINERY OPEARTION Fuel Conversion
Figure 3. Framework of lignocellulosic supply chain.
Energy
Twin Bar Rack with 180 HP
Metering Bin
Energy
Dust Collection
Energy Inputs
ETHANOL TRANSPORT, DISTRIBUTION AND BLENDING
Bio-Ethanol
Material flows VEHICLE OPERATION
Scenario Analysis
Sensitivity Analysis
Our focus is on identifying processes within the feedstock logistics sequence that introduce the most significant uncertainty in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA).
Life Cycle Assessment Framework Goal and Scope: Compare two scenarios of supply chain Corn stover-to-ethanol 1 MJ of ethanol
Figure 6. Sensitive Analysis on GHG emissions for Scenario 1.
Life Cycle Inventory Energy inputs from unit processes and transportation. Related greenhouse gas emissions
Figure 7. Sensitive Analysis on GHG emissions for Scenario 2.
Monte Carlos Simulation and Results Figure 4. Scenario 1 depot configuration based on equal spatial siting between depots and infrastructure availability
Life Cycle Impact Assessment
Figure 1. LCA Framework
Evaluate the impacts of releases on the environment (100-year global warming potential (GWP 100)).
Figure 8. Stochastic gate-to-gate logistics GHG emissions over the 90% confidence interval of Scenario 1.
Biorefinery Location Reno County: Proximity to five major highways (K14, K17, U50, K61 and K96) Proximity to four major railroads (St. Louis Southwestern, Missouri Pacific and Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway and Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad.) Figure 2. Highway (red) and rail systems (black) of Reno County
Figure 9. Stochastic gate-to-gate logistics GHG emissions over the 90% confidence interval of Scenario 2.
Figure 5. Scenario 2 depot configuration based on biomass density and infrastructure availability
Conclusions The preprocessing depots should be located near major railroads Transport distance and the volume of transported commodity are significant The uncertainty in GHG emissions declines with increasing number of preprocessing depots.
Figure 10. Scenario 1 can possibly produce higher GHG emissions than the conventional case (39.7 MJ of ethanol)
Acknowledgements This project was supported by Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive Grant No. 2012-68005-19703 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Long Nguyen was supported by the Freshman Design fellowship program at Drexel.
