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Cited by 39Biofuel production and bioconversionEnvironmental Impact and SustainabilityBioenergy crop production and management

Life cycle impacts of ethanol production from spruce wood chips under high-gravity conditions

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Janssen, Matty, Xiros, Charilaos, Tillman, Anne-Marie·2016·Biotechnology for Biofuels
DOI 10.1186/s13068-016-0468-3PMC PMC4779266
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Abstract

BACKGROUND: Development of more sustainable biofuel production processes is ongoing, and technology to run these processes at a high dry matter content, also called high-gravity conditions, is one option. This paper presents the results of a life cycle assessment (LCA) of such a technology currently in development for the production of bio-ethanol from spruce wood chips. RESULTS: The cradle-to-gate LCA used lab results from a set of 30 experiments (or process configurations) in which the main process variable was the detoxification strategy applied to the pretreated feedstock material. The results of the assessment show that a process configuration, in which washing of the pretreated slurry is the detoxification strategy, leads to the lowest environmental impact of the process. Enzyme production and use are the main contributors to the environmental impact in all process configurations, and strategies to significantly reduce this contribution are enzyme recycling and on-site enzyme production. Furthermore, a strong linear correlation between the ethanol yield of a configuration and its environmental impact is demonstrated, and the selected environmental impacts show a very strong cross-correlation ([Formula: see text] in all cases) which may be used to reduce the number of impact categories considered from four to one (in this case, global warming potential). Lastly, a comparison with results of an LCA of ethanol production under high-gravity conditions using wheat straw shows that the environmental performance does not significantly differ when using spruce wood chips. For this comparison, it is shown that eutrophication potential also needs to be considered due to the fertilizer use in wheat cultivation. CONCLUSIONS: The LCA points out the environmental hotspots in the ethanol production process, and thus provides input to the further development of the high-gravity technology. Reducing the number of impact categories based only on cross-correlations should be done with caution. Knowledge of the analyzed system provides further input to the choice of impact categories.

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  • The three midpoint indicators (GWP, AP, EP) are often cross-correlated.

    “These indicators, however, are often cross-correlated [54]”

    From Is Prolonging the Lifetime of Passive Durable Products a Low-Hanging Fruit of a Circular Economy? A Multiple Case Study (2019) · cites this paper as [54]

    The Results and discussion section, “Cross-correlations between impact categories,” reports very high cross-correlations (r² > 0.9) among the four categories studied, including GWP, AP and EP. The Conclusions explicitly limit this finding to the current case; the paper does not establish that these indicators are often cross-correlated across other settings. (LLM, conf=0.84)

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Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Janssen, M., Xiros, C., & Tillman, A.-M.
Affiliations
  • Chalmers University of Technology (SE)
  • Bern University of Applied Sciences (CH)
Corresponding author
Janssen, Matty
ORCID
Venue
Biotechnology for Biofuels
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2016-03-05
Volume
9
Issue
1
Pages
53-53
ISSN
1754-6834 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1186/s13068-016-0468-3
PMC
PMC4779266
OpenAlex
W2290066599
Cited by
39
References
4
Citations by year
2026: 3 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 6 · 2016: 4
FWCI
2.41
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
cc-by
Locations
  • Biotechnology for Biofuels (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Chalmers Publication Library (Chalmers University of Technology) (submittedVersion)
  • Chalmers Research (Chalmers University of Technology) (submittedVersion)
Funders
Nordic Energy Research (TFI PK-bio 02)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Engineering › Biomedical Engineering › Biofuel production and bioconversion
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Environmental Engineering › Environmental Impact and Sustainability
  • Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Agronomy and Crop Science › Bioenergy crop production and management
Keywords
bioethanol production, high gravity fermentation, detoxification, enzymatic hydrolysis, enzyme recycling, enzyme production, global warming potential, eutrophication, wheat straw, environmental impacts of biofuels

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