Abstract
Pyrolysis and gasification are considered as a means of producing renewable energy and improving energy sustainability, which has become attractive renewable technologies to many countries. Unlike other studies that are conducted in small scale, this study aims to aggregate the economic and environmental effects such as agricultural benefits, energy sale, and carbon sequestration to provide more detailed information to decision-makers before these projects are widely employed. This study first employs a lifecycle assessment to investigate the feasibility, profitability, and emission reduction of four major pyrolysis and gasification technologies using crop residuals, and then conducts a sensitive analysis to examine the most influential factors. The results indicate that the intermediate pyrolysis with rice straw and slow pyrolysis from corn stover could offset the carbon dioxide the most. However, the pyrolysis value is also sensitive to production of the feedstock used. Value adding of stover-based biochar under fast pyrolysis improves profitability but other technologies do not have such patterns. Additionally, while gasification can generate considerable amount of renewable electricity, it yields almost zero percent of biochar that can be used as a soil amendment, and thus its contribution to agricultural sector is trivial.
Highlights
China has become the largest importer of crude oil and natural gas
The intensive use of fossil fuel is beneficial to economic growth but emitted unprecedented amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) would make the environment unsustainable and possibly hamper the future growth of economy
This study investigates four types of pyrolysis to explore the economic and environmental effects such as potential benefits received by farmers, energy sales, and emission reductions
Summary
China has become the largest importer of crude oil and natural gas. Its dependence on foreign energy peaks at over 72% and 45% in 2018, respectively (Cheng, 2019). The intensive use of fossil fuel is beneficial to economic growth but emitted unprecedented amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) would make the environment unsustainable and possibly hamper the future growth of economy. For this reason, China has been seeking sustainable energy sources that are considered as clean (or green) and renewable. Renewable energy production from the utilization of agricultural resources has been considered as the primary solution. Land resource is sufficient that can insure the feedstock supply to bioenergy production. The byproduct produced from bioenergy development such as biochar may be used as a soil amendment to improve environmental quality and land fertility (Lehmann, 2007; McCarl et al, 2009)
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