Abstract
The life cycle human health (HH) impacts related to aviation biofuels have been understood in a limited way. Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods for assessing HH are often associated with a high level of uncertainty and a low level of consensus. As a result, it remains challenging to perform a robust assessment of HH impacts with a suitable LCIA method. This study aims to systematically compare six commonly used LCIA methods for quantifying HH impacts, in order to empirically understand the potential impacts of aviation biofuel production on HH and how the results are affected by the choice of methods. Three aviation biofuel production pathways based on different feedstocks (sugarcane, eucalyptus, and macauba) were analyzed and compared to fossil aviation biofuels, on the basis of a functional unit of 1 MJ aviation fuel. The majority of the LCIA methods suggest that, in respect to midpoint impacts, macauba-based biofuel is associated with the lowest impacts and eucalyptus-based biofuel the highest; whereas at endpoint level, the results are more scattered. The LCIA methods agree that biomass conversion into aviation biofuel, H2 production, and feedstock cultivation are major contributors to life cycle HH impacts. Additionally, we provide a guideline for determining an appropriate method for assessing HH impacts.
Highlights
Biofuels play a significant role in sustainable development worldwide
This study aimed to provide a systematic comparison among six common Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods for quantifying human health impacts, namely USEtox 2, ReCiPe 2016, IMPACT 2002+, EDIP
The comparative analysis was performed for the production of three distinct aviation biofuels in Brazil: sugarcane-ATJ, eucalyptus-fast pyrolysis (FP), and macauba-HEFA biofuels; and the potential human health impacts were assessed for five life cycle impact indicators: human carcinogenic toxicity (HCT), human non-carcinogenic toxicity (HNCT), fine particulate matter (FPM), photochemical smog (PS), and HH
Summary
Biofuels play a significant role in sustainable development worldwide. As one of the most important and highly demanded alternative fuels, biofuels enable a more flexible energy mix and transition from a fossil-based economy to a biobased one. Previous studies have examined the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of aviation biofuel produced via different technological pathways [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13] These studies show that a considerable reduction in GHG emissions can be achieved by substituting fossil aviation fuel with biofuel, the reduction percentage varies largely in the range of 41–104%, due to differences in assessment scope, methodologies, and data inputs. It remains uncertain how aviation biofuel performs in terms of other sustainability-related impacts
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