Morrow William R, Griffin W Michael, Matthews H Scott
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, USA.
Environ Sci Technol. 2006 May 1;40(9):2877-86. doi: 10.1021/es048296m.
Discussions of alternative fuel and propulsion technologies for transportation often overlook the infrastructure required to make these options practical and cost-effective. We estimate ethanol production facility locations and use a linear optimization model to consider the economic costs of distributing various ethanol fuel blends to all metropolitan areas in the United States. Fuel options include corn-based E5 (5% ethanol, 95% gasoline) to E16 from corn and switchgrass, as short-term substitutes for petroleum-based fuel. Our estimates of 1-2 cents per L of ethanol blend for downstream rail or truck transportation remain a relatively small fraction of total fuel cost. However, for even the relatively small blends of ethanol modeled, the transportation infrastructure demands would be comparably larger than the current demands of petroleum. Thus if ethanol is to be competitive in the long run, then in addition to process efficiency improvements, more efficient transportation infrastructure will need to be developed, such as pipelines. In addition to these results, national and regional policy challenges on how to pay for and optimize a new fuel and distribution infrastructure in the United States are discussed.
关于交通运输领域替代燃料和推进技术的讨论，常常忽视了使这些选择切实可行且具备成本效益所需的基础设施。我们估算了乙醇生产设施的位置，并使用线性优化模型来考量将各种乙醇燃料混合物配送至美国所有大都市地区的经济成本。燃料选择包括以玉米为原料的E5（5%乙醇，95%汽油）至以玉米和柳枝稷为原料的E16，作为石油基燃料的短期替代品。我们估计，下游铁路或卡车运输每升乙醇混合物的成本为1至2美分，这在总燃料成本中仍占相对较小的比例。然而，即便对于所模拟的相对少量的乙醇混合物而言，运输基础设施的需求也会比目前石油的需求大得多。因此，如果乙醇要在长期具备竞争力，那么除了提高工艺效率之外，还需要开发更高效的运输基础设施，比如管道。除了这些结果之外，还讨论了美国在如何为新的燃料及配送基础设施支付费用并进行优化方面的国家和地区政策挑战。
