Sustainability Assessment of Biodiesel Supply Chain from Various Biomasses and Conversion Technologies

Sahar Safarian (), Sorena Sattari and Zeinab Hamidzadeh
Additional contact information
Sahar Safarian: Scientific and Technological Department of Presidential Office
Sorena Sattari: Sharif University of Technology
Zeinab Hamidzadeh: Scientific and Technological Department of Presidential Office

Biophysical Economics and Resource Quality, 2018, vol. 3, issue 2, 1-15

Abstract: Abstract This paper develops a comprehensive sustainability assessment of producing biodiesel from five different types of feedstocks and totally 15 biomasses in Iran: (i) edible oil seeds (canola, soybean, olive, walnut, hazelnut, almond, sunflower, corn, and peanut), (ii) nonedible oil seeds (cotton and jatropha), (iii) waste cooking oil (WCO), (iv) animal fat (tallow and poultry), and (v) microalgae (Chlorella vulgaris). This assessment integrates the most significant economic, energy, environmental, and social aspects to compare and rank 15 biodiesel systems. The results show that WCO with production cost of 600$/tonbd, EUE of 2.8 and GHG emission of 0.35 ton CO2eq/tonbd is the top rank system from economic, energy and environmental perspectives, followed by tallow by having 876$/tonbd, 1.76 and 0.45 ton CO2eq/tonbd for production cost, EUE and GHG emission, respectively. Jatropha has also dominant statues socially and economic by having 7910 h/tonbd and 755$/tonbd for labor required and production cost, respectively but not suggested for Iran due to high water consumption (1053 m3/tonbd) and land use (10.9 ha/tonbd). Although algae takes up the top rank environmentally, it is not proposed because it has the highest production cost (5800$/tonbd) and very low job opportunity (65 h/tonbd). Finally, under different assessments, walnut and hazelnut have the higher ranks over the first-generation systems; however, in social aspect, cotton is in the high position.

Keywords: Sustainability assessment; Biodiesel supply; Vegetable oils; Microalgae; Waste cooking oil; Animal fat (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s41247-018-0039-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:bioerq:v:3:y:2018:i:2:d:10.1007_s41247-018-0039-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/41247

DOI: 10.1007/s41247-018-0039-2

Access Statistics for this article

Biophysical Economics and Resource Quality is currently edited by C.A.S. Hall and U. Bardi

More articles in Biophysical Economics and Resource Quality from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().