Benavides Pahola Thathiana, Gracida-Alvarez Ulises R, Richa Kirti, Port Jennifer, Hawkins Troy R
Systems Assessment Center, Energy Systems and Infrastructure Analysis Division, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 South Cass Avenue, Lemont, IL 60439 USA.
Systems Assessment Center, Energy Systems and Infrastructure Analysis Division, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 South Cass Avenue, Lemont, IL 60439 USA.
Bioresour Technol. 2025 Aug;430:132565. doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2025.132565. Epub 2025 Apr 21.
Conventional ethylene production heavily depends on fossil-derived feedstocks via steam cracking, a very energy- and emission-intensive process. Researchers have been exploring alternatives to reduce COemissions including producing ethylene from biobased feedstocks. This paper evaluates the cradle-to-gate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of bioethylene produced from U.S. corn ethanol. The analysis includes different pathways for the dehydration of corn ethanol to ethylene and co-processing routes via fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) processes. For the FCC co-processing route carbon-14 analysis is used to determine bioethanol yields. A 127% reduction in life cycle GHG emissions of bioethylene is estimated compared to fossil-derived ethylene for the base case. Additional case studies are also discussed to understand the reduction ofGHG emissionsdue tosustainable corn farming and renewable power use, biogenic carbon capture, and fuel switch with biofuels at the ethanol plant, and its impact on bioethylene GHG emissions.
传统的乙烯生产严重依赖通过蒸汽裂解的化石衍生原料，这是一个能源和排放密集型的过程。研究人员一直在探索减少碳排放的替代方法，包括从生物基原料生产乙烯。本文评估了美国玉米乙醇生产生物乙烯从摇篮到大门的温室气体（GHG）排放。分析包括玉米乙醇脱水制乙烯的不同途径以及通过流化催化裂化（FCC）工艺的共处理路线。对于FCC共处理路线，使用碳-14分析来确定生物乙醇产量。在基准情况下，估计生物乙烯的生命周期温室气体排放与化石衍生乙烯相比减少了127%。还讨论了其他案例研究，以了解由于可持续玉米种植和可再生能源使用、生物碳捕获以及乙醇厂使用生物燃料进行燃料转换而导致的温室气体排放减少情况，以及其对生物乙烯温室气体排放的影响。
