Using agricultural residues for sustainable transportation biofuels in 2050: Case of West Africa.

This article focuses on the use of biomass to produce transportation fuels such as synthetic natural gas, bioethanol and electricity under a sustainable scenario in West Africa in 2050. The aim of this work was to evaluate the feasibility of producing such biofuels using agricultural residues as feedstock in the studied area. The potential of biomass from ten agricultural residues was estimated in R environment using FAO data. Options were analyzed in order to generate portfolios of transportation fuels based on energy indicators, biomass availability and scenarios of technological progress. The optimal allocation varied from one country to the other, showing a fair tradeoff between the objective functions.

Conversion of vine shoots into bioethanol and chemicals: Prospective LCA of biorefinery concept.

Vine shoots are the viticulture residues generated in high quantities after the grapevine pruning. They are lignocellulosic material poorly exploited as feedstock. These wastes are often dumped in the agriculture fields or burnt. Due to their availability and relatively low price, vine shoots are considered as potential feedstock for biochemical conversion into value-added products. In this work, two biorefinery scenarios using vine shoots as feedstock to co-produce chemicals are assessed from an environmental point of view: production of lactic acid, and co-production of lactic acid and furfural. A CHP area was considered to be annexed to the plants to produce heat and electricity for internal use. The Aspen Plus and SimaPro commercial software were used to perform the LCA of the selected scenarios. The assessed scenarios demonstrate significant reductions in climate change, fossil fuel depletion, freshwater ecotoxicity and eutrophication and human toxicity impacts compared to their counterfactual systems.

Comparative assessment of selected sugarcane biorefinery-centered systems in Brazil: A multi-criteria method based on sustainability indicators.

This work proposes a new sustainability assessment framework aiming to compare selected options of biorefineries subject to provide the same services to a community. At this end, a concept of biorefinery-centered system helps to develop a joint resources and policy-oriented comparison. When an option of biorefinery cannot provide the given amounts of certain services from its own production, it complements its supply portfolio by purchasing the lacking amounts from complementary and conventional production systems. The proposed sustainability assessment framework includes a multi-criteria method used to compare the selected biorefinery options resulting in identifying their respective weaknesses and strengths against categories of criteria. Finally, the methodology helps finding the non-dominated option. Application to selected sugarcane-based biorefineries shows promising results that match with those obtained in a previous work. However, the new methodology allows extended and richer analyses.

Comparative techno-economic assessment and LCA of selected integrated sugarcane-based biorefineries.

This work addresses the economic and environmental performance of integrated biorefineries based on sugarcane juice and residues. Four multiproduct scenarios were considered; two from sugar mills and the others from ethanol distilleries. They are integrated biorefineries producing first (1G) and second (2G) generation ethanol, sugar, molasses (for animal feed) and electricity in the context of Brazil. The scenarios were analysed and compared using techno-economic value-based approach and LCA methodology. The results show that the best economic configuration is provided by a scenario with largest ethanol production while the best environmental performance is presented by a scenario with full integration sugar - 1G2G ethanol production.