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Biorefinery Sustainability Analysis

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Biorefineries

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Energy ((LNEN,volume 57))

Abstract

This chapter deals with sustainability analysis of biorefinery systems in terms of environmental and socio-economic indicators . Life cycle analysis has methodological issues related to the functional unit (FU), allocation , land use and biogenic carbon neutrality of the reference system and of the biorefinery-based system. Socio-economic criteria and indicators used in sustainability frameworks assessment are presented and discussed. There is not one single methodology that can aptly cover the synergies of environmental, economic, social and governance issues required to assess the sustainable production and use of bioenergy systems. The perfect metric for environmental issues is not yet established and some researchers prefer to avoid high levels of uncertainty in life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology and adopt more physically quantifying methods like the annual basis carbon (ABC) method presented here. In addition to establishing the perfect metric, there are three types of uncertainty when building scenarios with biorefinery-based systems that must be regarded to have a more holistic point of view. This uncertainty is at the level of the concept , of the configuration and of the operation .

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto Dom Luiz, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, 1749-016, Lisboa, Portugal

    Carla A. M. Silva

  2. CAPEC-PROCESS Research Center, DTU Chemical Engineering, Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, Søltofts Plads, Building 227 (Postal Address: Building 229), 2800 kgs, Lyngby, Denmark

    Remus M. Prunescu, Krist V. Gernaey & Gürkan Sin

  3. Instituto Centre for Environmental Policy, ICEPT, Imperial College London, 14 Princess Gardens, South Kensington, London, SW7 1NA, UK

    Rocio A. Diaz-Chavez

Authors
  1. Carla A. M. Silva
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  2. Remus M. Prunescu
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  3. Krist V. Gernaey
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  4. Gürkan Sin
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  5. Rocio A. Diaz-Chavez
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Carla A. M. Silva .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal

    Miriam Rabaçal

  2. Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal

    Ana F. Ferreira

  3. Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal

    Carla A. M. Silva

  4. Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal

    Mário Costa

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Silva, C.A.M., Prunescu, R.M., Gernaey, K.V., Sin, G., Diaz-Chavez, R.A. (2017). Biorefinery Sustainability Analysis. In: Rabaçal, M., Ferreira, A., Silva, C., Costa, M. (eds) Biorefineries. Lecture Notes in Energy, vol 57. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48288-0_7

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