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Abstract

With the advent of RenovaBio, Brazil has cast a new light towards the life cycle of cellulosic ethanol. Once considered a resource intensive alternative pathway to achieve the same biofuel, second-generation approaches can now provide an economic advantage due to their potentially lower carbon footprint. The exploration of lignocellulosic harvest residues to this end can be beneficial, since productivity can be increased while not expanding cultivated areas. Eucalyptus forest residues are an example, result of logging and harvest procedures, being a low-cost and readily available biomass. Through an integrated biorefinery process simulation and a Life Cycle Assessment of the coproduction of ethanol and electricity, it was analyzed whether forestry burden is truly relevant when exploring this material, identifying technical and environmental bottlenecks. The biorefinery design implementation of anaerobic digestion and energy integration allowed a productivity boost of 20% for ethanol and 115% for electricity. With a 80 km collection radius, an annual production capacity of 30.3 ML could be achieved in the Campinas region. Enzymes were identified as the main environmental hotspot, but inconsistent published datasets and lack of transparency lead to inconclusive results regarding this input. While the burden associated with the lignocellulosic feedstock is relevant in most impact categories, the main bottleneck resides within the biorefinery itself, with inputs related to pretreatment and hydrolysis, boiler emissions and water consumption. Nevertheless, eucalyptus harvest residues cannot be considered a burden-free resource, since additional operations such as retrieval and transportation cannot be dismissed and often surpasses the impact potential of the aforementioned forestry activities.

Original languageEnglish
Article number126956
JournalJournal of Cleaner Production
Volume299
Early online date2 Apr 2021
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 25 May 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank S?o Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) for the financial support (grants #2015/50612-8, #2018/20173-0 and #2019/10439-6). This study was financed in part by the Coordena??o de Aperfei?oamento de Pessoal de N?vel Superior - Brasil (CAPES) Finance Code 001.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier Ltd

Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

Funding

The authors would like to thank S?o Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) for the financial support (grants #2015/50612-8, #2018/20173-0 and #2019/10439-6). This study was financed in part by the Coordena??o de Aperfei?oamento de Pessoal de N?vel Superior - Brasil (CAPES) Finance Code 001.

Keywords

  • Biorefinery design
  • Cellulosic ethanol
  • Eucalyptus
  • Harvest residues
  • Life cycle assessment

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
  • General Environmental Science
  • Strategy and Management
  • Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

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