Greenhouse gas emissions of corn–ethanol production in China

Q. Yang and G.Q. Chen

Ecological Modelling, 2013, vol. 252, issue C, 176-184

Abstract: For China as the world's third largest ethanol producer, greenhouse gas emissions of corn–ethanol production are analyzed for the entire processes of corn cultivation, ethanol conversion and wastewater treatment. Besides the greenhouse gas emissions associated with primary fossil energy use embodied in all the energy and material flows into corn–ethanol processes, the increased greenhouse gas emissions due to soil tilling and erosion, methane emissions from burning corn stalk and the wastewater are carefully estimated. For per kg corn–ethanol produced, a net positive greenhouse gas emission of 11.61kgCO2-equiv. is revealed corresponding to a striking increase of 5.99 times in greenhouse emissions when corn–ethanol is used as a substitute for gasoline. Moreover, ethanol production might lead to a highly remarkable 98% GHG reduction compared to gasoline by an ecological systems design of the production chain with constructed wetland, biogas and combined heat and power fully employed, though existing technology is illustrated to be far from carbon neutral under various allocations for co-products.

Keywords: Greenhouse gas emissions; Corn–ethanol; Bio-fuel (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304380012003377
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:252:y:2013:i:c:p:176-184

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2012.07.011

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Modelling is currently edited by Brian D. Fath

More articles in Ecological Modelling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().