Abstract
The depletion of fossil energy resources and the increased energy consumption led to the intensification of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Consequently, the investigation for renewable energy sources has focused on biofuels, aiming to the improvement of the energy security supply. Biofuels are considered alternative fuels targeting to reduce the transportation sector’s dependency on fossil resources and GHG emissions. However, the production of FAME (Fatty Acid Methyl Esters) biodiesel via transesterification of vegetable oils, raised significant issues e.g. food versus fuel debate. Catalytic hydrotreatment constitutes an alternative conversion process of vegetable oils and/or animal fats into bio-based diesel fuels and has been applied in industrial scale for the production of hydrotreated vegetable oils (HVOs). Residual biomass such as waste cooking oil (WCO) has been extensively explored as potential feedstock for renewable diesel production via catalytic hydrotreatment in CPERI/CERTH. However, considering the high investment cost of hydroprocessing units of vegetable and/or waste oils, the option of co-processing petroleum fractions with oils has recently started being investigated. More specifically, co-hydroprocessing of petroleum fractions with WCO was also examined in CPERI/CERTH, resulting in the production of a new hybrid diesel.
Nevertheless, the production of renewable fuels also has environmental impacts that should be evaluated via Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in order to identify the most sustainable fuels. This LCA study compares the environmental performance of the renewable diesel and the hybrid diesel produced via WCO hydrotreatment and co-hydroprocessing petroleum fractions with WCO, respectively. In addition, accounting for the fact that the renewable diesel could be potentially used as a blending component of fossil diesel (in blends up to 7 % v/v) its sustainability assessment was also taken into account. Another scope of this study was to compare the environmental impacts of the aforementioned fuels and the fossil diesel (containing 7 % v/v FAME biodiesel), in order to identify the potentially most environmentally friendly fuel/fuels. The comparison was based on a Well-To-Tank analysis (WTT) including only the production processes of all fuels considered.
The LCA results showed that the hybrid diesel presented the most favorable environmental profile. Moreover, the sustainability of the renewable diesel and the hybrid diesel are higher as compared to the fossil diesel. Nevertheless, by comparing the GHG emissions of the blend of the renewable diesel with fossil diesel, with other HVOs its environmental superiority was also evident. The finding of this study highlight that the hybrid diesel produced via co-hydroprocessing petroleum fractions with WCO presented the optimal environmental performance with respect to all the fuels production systems examined, validating its sustainability superiority, promoting also the incorporation of residual biomass in the refinery. Consequently, the integration of WCO in the refining via the co-processing technology supports the production of bio-based sustainable fuels compared to stand-alone biomass conversion technologies.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the EU-Program LIFE+ LIFE08 ENV/GR/000569 and by the project SustainDiesel-09SYN-32-328 which is funded 50 % by the European Commission and the Greek Government.
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Nomenclature
Nomenclature
- FAME:
-
Fatty acid methyl esters
- GHG:
-
Greenhouse gas
- GWP:
-
Global warming potential
- HAGO:
-
Heavy atmospheric gas oil
- HVOs:
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Hydrotreated vegetable oils
- LAGO:
-
Light atmospheric gas oil
- LCA:
-
Life cycle assessment
- WCO:
-
Waste cooking oil
- WTT:
-
Well-to-tank
- TTW:
-
Tank-to-wheel
- WTW:
-
Well-to-wheel
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Bezergianni, S., Chrysikou, L.P. (2016). Sustainability Assessment of Fuels Production via Hydrotreating Waste Lipids and Co-processing Waste Lipids with Petroleum Fractions. In: Grammelis, P. (eds) Energy, Transportation and Global Warming. Green Energy and Technology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30127-3_30
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30127-3_30
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