A life-cycle based co-benefits analysis of biomass pellet production in China

Lu Jiang, Bing Xue, Zhixiao Ma, Lu Yu, Beijia Huang and Xingpeng Chen

Renewable Energy, 2020, vol. 154, issue C, 445-452

Abstract: Strew pellet production not only contribute to regional sustainable development and localized energy transition, but also help to mitigate global greenhouse gas emissions. With the development strew pellet products in China, it is critical to uncover the embodied emissions, land use and economic cost effectiveness from producing strew pellet. In order to reach such a target, two main categories of biomass pellet production including a large-scale centralized factory and a small-scale distributed workshop are investigated. Compared with raw coal production, the unit co-benefits in terms of per gigajoule of straw pellets from centralized factory are 1687 kg CO2, 8.65 g SO2, 3.21 g NOx, and 3.897 g PM10, and 0.33 m2 land use, and those for straw pellets from centralized factory are 1352 kg CO2, 8.46 g SO2, 3.12 g NOx, and 4.22 g PM10, and 0.33 m2 land use. Cost-effectiveness for the two straw pellets production system were also uncovered so that the relevant interested agents such as decision makers, business investors or environmental researchers can see the potential economic performance from developing such kind biomass plants. We conclude that environmental performance of the straw pellets whether from centralized factor or decentralized workshop have attractive alternatives to coal production.

Keywords: Biomass energy; Densified biofuel; Straw pellet; Co-benefits approach; Life cycle assessment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148120303657
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:renene:v:154:y:2020:i:c:p:445-452

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2020.03.043

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

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