EISA (Energy Independence and Security Act) compliant ethanol fuel from corn stover in a depot-based decentralized system: EISA-Compliant Ethanol Fuel from Corn Stover in a Depot-Based Decentralized System
- Michigan State Univ., East Lansing, MI (United States); Michigan State University Department of Chemical Engineering
- Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), College Park, MD (United States). Joint Global Change Research Inst.
- Michigan State Univ., East Lansing, MI (United States)
- Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States)
- Texas A & M Univ., Temple, TX (United States). Texas AgriLife Research and Extension
Cellulosic biofuels confront significant problems of feedstock aggregation and logistics leading to poor economies of scale. The current model is for relatively small biorefineries using feedstock gathered locally. In this work a depot-based decentralized biorefinery system is explored to estimate the US Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) compliant corn stover ethanol production potential in the US Midwest. Depots serve to aggregate, pretreat, and densify biomass (via pellets) and thereby enable very large biorefineries using a decentralized system to collect these pellets. Such a corn-stover based decentralized system using depots would establish one or two very large-scale decentralized biorefineries capable of processing about 8–12% of the total corn stover available in the US Midwest. These decentralized biorefineries are economically competitive with the centralized biorefineries. About 55–153 depots could supply the pretreated pellets to the individual decentralized biorefineries leading to an annual production of 1.02–2.91 billion liters of cellulosic ethanol fuel. Most of the participating depots are located in Illinois and Iowa. The total EISA-compliant ethanol fuel produced in the decentralized system is 2.82–4.07 billion liters per year. The ethanol selling price in the depot-based decentralized biorefinery system varies between US$$\$$$$0.67 and US$$\$$$$ 0.72 L-1. The greenhouse gas (GHG) savings from cellulosic ethanol in the decentralized system compared to gasoline are 3.35–4.84 Tg CO2 year-1. Moreover, the total capital investment per annual volume of ethanol in the decentralized biorefinery ranges from US $0.71 L1 to US $1.15 L1, while the total capital investment per annual ethanol volume in the centralized biorefinery is US $1.98 L-1.
- Research Organization:
- Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER) (SC-23); USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- SC0018409; AC05-76RL01830; FC02-07ER64494
- OSTI ID:
- 1506657
- Alternate ID(s):
- OSTI ID: 1542063
OSTI ID: 1454900
- Journal Information:
- Biofuels, Bioproducts & Biorefining, Journal Name: Biofuels, Bioproducts & Biorefining Journal Issue: 5 Vol. 12; ISSN 1932-104X
- Publisher:
- WileyCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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journal | November 2019 |
Integration in a depot‐based decentralized biorefinery system: Corn stover‐based cellulosic biofuel
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journal | January 2019 |
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