Comparative life cycle assessments of stand-alone and integrated green hydrogen and biofuel value chains: A case study on drop-in biocrude, biohydrogen and biomethanol production systems

Potential use and the energy conversion efficiency analysis of fermentation effluents from photo and dark fermentative bio-hydrogen production

Chapter 1 - Anaerobic fermentation process for biohydrogen production from food waste

This paper studies the implementation of a system consisting of an electrolyzer connected to a bioelectricity generator set that operates using vinasse biogas. Data on total ethanol production across all regions of Brazil were collected, and two ethanol plants in São Paulo state were selected for analysis (São Jose da Estiva and São Manoel). The feasibility of implementing this system at these facilities was evaluated using energy analysis for biohydrogen production. The process’s energy efficiency was assessed, allowing for the construction of a Sankey Diagram for both plants. Additionally, the costs of producing bioelectricity and biohydrogen via electrolysis using vinasse biogas from Brazil’s sugar/alcohol industry were determined, factoring in the payback period, equivalent utilization period, and annual interest rate. The study demonstrates the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of producing biohydrogen using vinasse biogas. The cost of producing bioelectricity at the two plants decreases significantly over the 25-year system implementation period, starting at around 0.09–0.08 USD/kWh in the first year and dropping to a minimum of 0.027–0.039 USD/kWh by the end of the period. The initial cost of producing biohydrogen ranges from 0.24 to 0.25 USD/kWh at São Jose da Estiva and from 0.30 to 0.32 USD/kWh at São Manoel in the first year. However, prices drop by nearly half in the second year, reaching 0.05 to 0.06 USD/kWh at São Jose da Estiva and 0.06 to 0.07 USD/kWh at São Manoel. The payback period for the biohydrogen and bioelectricity production system increases, with São Jose da Estiva generating income by 1st year for a 4% to 12% interest rate. For São Manoel, income is expected by the 1.5 year for a 4% to 12% interest rate. Both plants recover their investment within the first 2 years of operation. By the 10th year, São Jose da Estiva’s income is projected to be between 3,888,501.96 USD (4%) and 3,678,407.29 USD (12%), while São Manoel’s income is expected to range from 3,123,824.69 USD (4%) to 2,932,050.63 USD (12%), demonstrating that the system is viable for sugar and ethanol plants.

In this paper I propose to push the frontier of global value chain (GVC) governance analysis through the concept of ‘polarity’. Much of the existing GVC literature has focused on ‘unipolar’ value chains, where one group of ‘lead firms’ inhabiting a specific function in a chain plays a dominant role in governing it. Some scholars have explored the dynamics of governance in GVCs characterized as ‘bipolar’, where two sets of actors in different functional positions both drive the chain. I expand this direction further to suggest conceptualizing governance within a continuum between unipolarity and multipolarity Empirically, I do so by examining the evolutionary dynamics of governance in biofuel value chains, with specific focus on the key regulatory and institutional features that facilitated their emergence and expansion. First, I examine the formation, evolution, and governance of three national/regional value chains (in Brazil, the US, and the EU); then, I provide evidence to support a trend towards the increasing but still partial formation of a global biofuel value chain and examine its governance traits.

Introducing Green GDP as an Objective to Account for Changes in Global Ecosystem Services Due to Biofuel Production

In this article we analyze the community capital implications of an emerging canola biofuel value chain within wheat-producing regions of the United States as radical changes are taking place in energy markets and prices drop. We analyze the intersections of the motivations that encourage and sustain value chain participation and stocks and investments of community capitals. We use the Community Capitals Framework (Flora et al. 2016) to analyze the ways that new biofuel value chains affect various types of capital within rural communities, and to understand the context, processes, and impacts of decision-making within the biofuel value chain. Interviews and focus groups with actors along the value chain including farmers, processors, transporters, plant breeders, extension professionals, and farm service suppliers identify motivational factors and how community resources affect participation decisions.

Biofuel production from oilseed trees in small‐scale agroforestry systems is considered as a strategy for energy security, rural development and ecosystem services provision in low‐income countries. However, the economic potential of these systems remains unclear, as profitability studies commonly ignore key methodological issues such as quantitative uncertainty analysis, full accounting for opportunity costs, and inclusion of all value chain actors. This study addresses these methodological shortcomings and develops a framework for quantifying the long‐term financial performance of agroforestry‐based biofuel value chains. The framework is applied to a case in South India, to calculate profitability of pongamia (Millettia pinnata) cultivation and processing. The results show that pongamia cultivation has limited financial potential, and is only profitable in small‐scale settings, in the middle to long term and for a subset of farmers. If biodiesel is envisaged as the end product, the value chain requires substantial fiscal and marketing support to be economically viable. For current prices, financial performance is much higher if the seed oil is marketed instead of processed to biodiesel. Increased mechanization, increased yields and optimized agroforestry set‐ups might improve financial outcomes and reduce risks for both farmers and processors. These findings are case‐specific, while the developed framework opens the door to comprehensive investigation of the financial performance of other oilseed tree species and in other regions.

Biohydrogen production through dark fermentation is very attractive as a solution to help mitigate the effects of climate change, via cleaner bioenergy production. Dark fermentation is a process where organic substrates are converted into bioenergy, driven by a complex community of microorganisms of different functional guilds. Understanding of the microbiomes underpinning the fermentation of organic matter and conversion to hydrogen, and the interactions among various distinct trophic groups during the process, is critical in order to assist in the process optimisations. Research in biohydrogen production via dark fermentation is currently advancing rapidly, and various microbiology and molecular biology tools have been used to investigate the microbiomes. We reviewed here the different systems used and the production capacity, together with the diversity of the microbiomes used in the dark fermentation of industrial wastes, with a special emphasis on palm oil mill effluent (POME). The current challenges associated with biohydrogen production were also included. Then, we summarised and discussed the different molecular biology tools employed to investigate the intricacy of the microbial ecology associated with biohydrogen production. Finally, we included a section on the future outlook of how microbiome-based technologies and knowledge can be used effectively in biohydrogen production systems, in order to maximise the production output.

The promotion of social inclusion of smallholders in agricultural value chains is a major concern of policymakers in the fields of development and business. The inclusion of smallholders, who constitute the majority of the rural poor (World Bank 2007), is seen as an important way to improve rural incomes. However, in policy circles the concept of social inclusion is often simply taken for granted, without specification or validation of the assumptions underlying the concept. This chapter unpacks the discourse on social inclusion by specifying doubtful assumptions and identifying major limitations of its use in policy formulation. To overcome these limitations, we propose the use of two theoretical concepts to analyse policies directed at social inclusion: the concept of ‘embeddedness’, as developed in economic sociology, and the concept of ‘scale’, emerging from political ecology. With these two theoretical concepts, we identify mechanisms of exclusion within social inclusion policy, resulting in the opposite of what the policies intend. In a case study of public policy directed at social inclusion in an agro-energy chain, we witness the discourse on social inclusion confronting the realities and rationalities of the people targeted. This case demonstrates how the concepts of embeddedness and scale can be applied to uncover the way social inclusion as a policy discourse may exist in parallel to social exclusion in practice. The case study is that of the national biodiesel programme of Brazil, a large-scale agro-energy programme aimed at social inclusion of family agriculture. It is an example of the worldwide emergence of agro-energy or biofuel value chains. These chains have two distinctive features (Mol 2007). The first is the strong and proactive role of the national government in regulating and supporting biofuel production. The second is that national programmes have been introduced in many developing countries to promote rural development and poverty alleviation through the inclusion of smallholders in biofuel chains (Jull et al. 2007; Rothkopf 2007; UN Energy 2007). The ‘unpacking’ of social inclusion as a discourse, the theoretical proposal and the case study form the three main parts of this chapter. The final section constructs our theoretical argument and proposes the blending of insights from different disciplinary fields for the study of social inclusion in value chains.

Biological hydrogen with industrial potential: Improvement and prospection in biohydrogen production

Influence of laser photoactivated graphitic carbon nitride nanosheets and nickel nanoparticles on purple non-sulfur bacteria for biohydrogen production from biomass

PurposeIntegrated multi-trophic aquaculture (IMTA), growing different species in the same space, is a technology that may help manage the environmental impacts of coastal aquaculture. Nutrient discharges to seawater from monoculture aquaculture are conceptually minimized in IMTA, while expanding the farm economic base. In this study, we investigate the environmental trade-offs for a small-to-medium enterprise (SME) considering a shift from monoculture towards IMTA production of marine fish.MethodsA comparative life cycle assessment (LCA), including uncertainty analysis, was implemented for an aquaculture SME in Italy. Quantification and simultaneous propagation of uncertainty of inventory data and uncertainty due to the choice of allocation method were combined with dependent sampling to account for relative uncertainties and statistical testing and interpretation to understand the uncertainty analysis results. Monte Carlo simulations were used as a propagation method. The environmental impacts per kilo of fish produced in monoculture and in IMTA were compared. Twelve impact categories were considered. The comparison is first made excluding uncertainty (deterministic LCA) and then accounting for uncertainties.Results and discussionDeterministic LCA results evidence marginal differences between the impacts of IMTA and monoculture fish production. IMTA performs better on all impacts studied. However, statistical testing and interpretation of the uncertainty analysis results showed that only mean impacts for climate change are significantly different for both productive systems, favoring IMTA. For the case study, technical variables such as scales of production of the species from different trophic levels, their integration (space and time), and the choice of species determine the trade-offs. Also, LCA methodological choices such as that for an allocation method and the treatment of relative uncertainties were determinant in the comparison of environmental trade-offs.ConclusionsThe case study showed that environmental trade-offs between monoculture and IMTA fish production depend on technical variables and methodological choices. The combination of statistical methods to quantify, propagate, and interpret uncertainty was successfully tested. This approach supports more robust environmental trade-off assessments between alternatives in LCAs with uncertainty analysis by adding information on the significance of results. It was difficult to establish whether IMTA does bring benefits given the scales of production in the case study. We recommend that the methodology defined here is applied to fully industrialized IMTA systems or bay-scale environments, to provide more robust conclusions about the environmental benefits of this aquaculture type in Europe.

The rise and fall of foreign private investment in the jatropha biofuel value chain in Ghana

Biohydrogen production with the light-harvesting function of grana from spirulina and colloidal platinum

The goal of this chapter is to assess environmental impacts of biohydrogen production regarding anthropogenic climate change, emissions with an acidification impact and further impact categories by means of a life cycle approach. In conjunction with reducing the use of fossil resources, there is a need to prioritize those technologies that will provide the least impact on the environment. Thus, a variety of processes of hydrogen production derived from biomass feedstock are investigated related to environmental effects. This case study considers biohydrogen production derived from biomass sources from forestry and short rotation coppice (SRC), herbaceous biomass (i.e. wheat straw), energy crops (mainly maize and grain) and biowaste in Germany. The technology with the most promising results regarding the environmental impact is steam methane reforming (SMR) of a substrate mix from nonfood substrates compared to steam methane reforming of natural gas.