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Sustainability study of biodiesel from Acrocomia totai

  • Authors (legacy)
    Corresponding: Magin Lapuerta
    Co-authors: Lapuerta M.
    Ruiz R.A.
    Lechón Y.
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  • gnest_01348_published.pdf
  • Paper ID
    gnest_01348
  • Paper status
    Published
  • Date paper submitted
  • Date paper accepted
  • Date paper online
DOI
https://doi.org/10.30955/gnj.001348
Abstract

The aim of this work is to quantify the life-cycle emissions in terms of CO2 equivalent grams per megajoule of biodiesel produced from Acrocomia totai, a native oily seed from Paraguay, according to Directive 2009/28/EC. The other key point is to calculate the amount of energy invested to get a megajoule of biodiesel, by means of two different ratios: the EROI (Energy Return On Investment) and the FER (Fossil Energy Ratio).

The LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) performed considers the following steps: harvesting, transportation, oil extraction from the fruits, transportation of the vegetable oil, oil conversion to biodiesel, distribution and combustion of the biodiesel. In this case, two different scenarios have been considered: Scenario 1: full distribution in Paraguay; Scenario 2: exportation to European countries, such as Spain.

The first set of results is the emissions in each step of the LC (Life Cycle) as well as the total emissions. The second set of results is the energy ratios. The GHG emission saving is 86.69 % with respect to the LC greenhouse emissions from Diesel EN-590 (with a default emissions value of 83.8 g CO2e MJdiesel-1) for Scenario 1 and 74.24 % for Scenario 2.

 

Keywords
Life cycle analysis Greenhouse emissions EROI Fossil Energy Ratio
Cite this article
Lapuerta, M., Ruiz, R. and Lech?n, Y. (2014) “Sustainability study of biodiesel from Acrocomia totai”, Global NEST Journal, 16(6). Available at: https://doi.org/10.30955/gnj.001348.
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  • gnest_01348_published.pdf