Life Cycle Assessment of Large-scale Compressed Bio-natural Gas Production in China: A Case Study on Manure Co-digestion with Corn Stover

Yang Yang, Ji-Qin Ni, Wanbin Zhu and Guanghui Xie
Additional contact information
Yang Yang: College of Agronomy and Biotechnology, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100193, China
Ji-Qin Ni: Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA
Wanbin Zhu: College of Agronomy and Biotechnology, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100193, China
Guanghui Xie: College of Agronomy and Biotechnology, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100193, China

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 3, 1-16

Abstract: Compressed bio-natural gas (CBG) production from large-scale systems has been recognized as promising because of the abundance of manure and crop residue feedstocks and its environmental friendliness. This study is a life cycle assessment using the local database of an operating large-scale CBG system of manure co-digestion with corn stover in China and eBalance software. The results showed that the system’s Primary Energy Input to Output (PEIO) ratio was 20%. Its anaerobic digestion process was the main contributor to energy consumption, accounting for 76%. Among the six environmental impacts investigated in this study, the global warming potential (GWP) was the major environmental impact, and the digestate effluent management process was the main contributor to the GWP, accounting for 60%. The mitigation potential of the system, compared with reference case for GWP, was 3.19 kg CO 2 -eq for 1 m 3 CBG production. In the future, the GWP mitigation could be 479 × 10 6 metric tons CO 2 -eq with 150 × 10 9 m 3 yr −1 CBG production from the entire China. This study provides a reference on large-scale CBG production system for establishing a localized life cycle assessment inventory database in China.

Keywords: compressed bio-natural gas; eBalance; energy efficiency; environmental impact; mitigation potential (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/3/429/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/3/429/ (text/html)

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:gam:jeners:v:12:y:2019:i:3:p:429-:d:201837

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().