Page 424 - Biofuels for a More Sustainable Future

CHAPTER 14

An aggregated life cycle

sustainability index for ranking

biofuel production pathways

,†
Jingzheng Ren*, Yi Man* , Yue Liu*, Ruojue Lin*
*
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University,
Hong Kong SAR, China
†
School of Light Industry and Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China
Contents

1 Introduction 377
2 Life cycle aggregated sustainability index of three biofuel production pathways 379
3 Conclusions 389
References 389

1 Introduction

Biofuels (bioethanol and biodiesel) which can be synthesized via various
bioprocesses can have significant contributions on promoting the develop-
ment of sustainable and renewable energy in future (Peng et al., 2018). Bio-
fuels can be produced from various different feedstocks, that is, sweet
sorghum, cassava, sweet potato, biomass, sewage sludge, Jatropha curcas L.,
and Pistacia chinensis (Ren et al., 2015a). In addition, the development of bio-
fuel industry can not only enhance the energy security, but also mitigate the
negative environmental impacts. For instance, sewage sludge can be con-
verted into energy via various biochemical processes (Ren et al., 2017).
However, different pathways for the production of biofuels have different
production costs, different environmental impacts, and different social con-
tributions, thus, the sustainability performances of different pathways for
biofuel production are different. Therefore sustainability assessment of dif-
ferent pathways for biofuel production is beneficial to select the most sus-
tainable biofuel production pathway among multiple options.
Life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) comprised of life cycle assess-
ment (LCA), an economic life cycle analysis (ELCA, also called “life cycle

Biofuels for a More Sustainable Future © 2020 Elsevier Inc.
https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-815581-3.00014-2 All rights reserved. 377