A Case Study Investigating the Environmental Impact of Pelleting in Cellulosic Biofuel Manufacturing

Abstract

Cellulosic biofuel manufacturing consists of two major processes, biomass feedstock preprocessing and bioconversion. Traditionally, these two processes are conducted in different locations in practice and transportation is required to connect the two processes. Pelleting in preprocessing can help reduce the size and increase the density of biomass so that the transportation and handling can be more efficient. However, pelleting is also considered an energy-intensive process that consumes a large amount of energy, which leads to considerable greenhouse gas emissions. Due to such an environmental and energy related concern, the use of pelleting process in real industry is still in doubt regarding its performance of environmental sustainability although it has been extensively studied in laboratory scale. In this paper, we analyze both positive and negative impacts of pelleting in biofuel manufacturing regarding GHG emissions. A numerical case study focusing on the transportation is conducted to examine such impacts through the comparison between the scenarios with and without pelleting process to estimate the net emission due to the pelleting process.

Meeting Name

ASME 2017 12th International Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference, MSEC 2017 (2017: Jun. 4-8, Los Angeles, CA)

Department(s)

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering

Research Center/Lab(s)

Intelligent Systems Center

Keywords and Phrases

Manufacturing; Biofuel

International Standard Book Number (ISBN)

978-0-7918-5075-6

Document Type

Article - Conference proceedings

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2017 American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Jun 2017

Link to Full Text

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