Technology assessment of biomass ethanol : a multi-objective, life cycle approach under uncertainty

A methodology is presented for assessing the current and future utilization of agricultural crops as feedstocks for the production of transportation fuels, specifically, the use of corn grain and stover for ethanol production. The generic methodology integrates chemical process design and decision analysis tools. Four primary concepts are incorporated to address the performance of technologies and policies: 1) expansion of the system boundaries to include the entire process life cycle, 2) incorporation of both economic and environmental metrics for multi-objective optimization with tradeoff analysis using Pareto curves, 3) explicit incorporation of uncertainty analysis using Bayesian updating, and 4) integration of multiple feedstocks, processes, and products, in a network optimization framework, with subsequent decomposition to more refined models, for an improvement assessment of specific research and development goals. The first step is an assessment of the emerging corn grain ethanol industry in the U.S. Using life cycle assessment with Bayesian uncertainty propagation, the net energy balance of corn grain ethanol production is calculated and shown to be slightly positive.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Chemical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Johnson, Jeremy C. (Jeremy Clayton)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Gregory J. McRae.

• Chemical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/35132
• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Identifier URI

http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/35132

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/35132