Economic and environmental evaluation of miscanthus sustainability as a bioenergy feedstock
Lin, Emily Paige
This item's files can only be accessed by the System Administrators group.
Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/125831
Description
Title
Economic and environmental evaluation of miscanthus sustainability as a bioenergy feedstock
Author(s)
Lin, Emily Paige
Issue Date
2024-07-17
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Guest, Jeremy S
Department of Study
Civil & Environmental Eng
Discipline
Environ Engr in Civil Engr
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
M.S.
Degree Level
Thesis
Keyword(s)
Biofuel, bioenergy, miscanthus life cycle assessment, techno-economic analysis
Abstract
Miscanthus is a perennial grass and has attracted great research interests as a promising biofuel and bioproduct feedstock. To project the impacts of miscanthus production on an ecosystem and the sustainability of the generated biofuels and bioproducts, robust and spatially explicit evaluation of the entire field-to-biorefinery value chain is required. The overarching goal of this work is to determine the economic and environmental sustainability of biorefineries with miscanthus as the feedstock. Using an ethanol biorefinery as an example, we leveraged the ecosystem model DayCent and the biorefinery simulation tool BioSTEAM for integrated life cycle assessment (LCA) and techno-economic analysis (TEA). We quantified global warming potential (GWP) and cost of the produced ethanol with location-specific parameters (e.g., climate and soil conditions) across the rain-fed U.S. Our results indicated that miscanthus yield and soil organic carbon change are the main drivers of the sustainability of miscanthus-derived biofuels and the cost of the biofuel is dependent on the feedstock yield and economic parameters of the state in which it is located.
Use this login method if you
don't
have an
@illinois.edu
email address.
(Oops, I do have one)
IDEALS migrated to a new platform on June 23, 2022. If you created
your account prior to this date, you will have to reset your password
using the forgot-password link below.
