Knowledge Bank

Cellulosic biofuels are becoming a popular option for alternative fuels that could decrease fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions without interfering with the food supply. At this point in time, studies of cellulosic fuels from a life cycle point of view have been largely limited to ethanol. Furthermore, most methods of life cycle assessment do not consider ecological goods and services, even though these are important precursors to any industrial project. In this project, butanol, ethanol, and biodiesel fuels were compared using Eco-LCA. Fossil fuel requirements, water requirements, CO2 emissions, reactive nitrogen losses to the environment, and Ecological Cumulative Exergy Consumption were quantified for the life cycle of each fuel. Gasoline, diesel, corn ethanol, and soybean biodiesel were included for purpose of comparison. The corn-stover-derived fuels were demonstrated to have numerous advantages, including lower fossil fuel requirements and ECEC than their petroleum based counterparts, while also having lower water requirements and reactive nitrogen losses than corn ethanol and soybean biodiesel.