ENHANCED FRAMEWORK, LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT, AND TECHNO-ECONOMIC ANALYSISFOR COST-EFFECTIVE BIOREFINERIES

With 30% of carbon emissions in 2022, the transportation sector was the largest contributor to carbon emissions in the U.S. To tackle CO2 emissions in the U.S. transportation sector, a combined effort among electricity as a fuel, hydrogen fuel, and biofuel is required. Existing literature showed that the primary focus of current research on carbon emissions from transportation is on electric vehicles (EVs). Although many efforts have been made to examine carbon emission reduction with EVs, information on the potential for significant reduction of carbon emission with carbon-negative biofuels is limited. The existing literature indicated the major knowledge gap of biorefineries is the lack of a standard for framework, life cycle assessment (LCA), and techno-economic analysis (TEA) on biorefineries. The objective of this study is to systematically evaluate the carbon efficiency and cost-effectiveness of biofuels. The specific research objectives of this study were to: (1) develop an enhanced framework to incorporate indicators to measure environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors, (2) performance an LCA for biorefineries, and (3) perform a TEA for biorefineries. An enhanced framework that incorporates the circular economy principles of reducing, reusing, and recycling was developed to support the circular economy. Since this enhanced framework is the measurement of ESG factors, this framework can be used as an ESG Scorecard. LCA and TEA were performed on biorefineries. The results indicated that biorefineries are promising approaches for the reduction of carbon emissions and biofuels should be considered as serious horses in this race to achieve the carbon-neutral goal by 2050.