Abstract
Calculation of life-cycle greenhouse gas (LC-GHG) emission is necessary to verify the rationale behind any biofuel production project, as a countermeasure for climate change. Here, a process inventory model was constructed based on pilot-scale experiments on biodiesel production using an ion-exchange resin catalyzed (IERC) process. The IERC process prevents soap formation, which also leads to the elimination of water-soluble contaminants entering the product biodiesel i.e., removes the two major problems in recently developed diesel engines with sophisticated injection mechanisms introduced for pollution reduction. Our mass-balance-consistent model reflects the influence of the FFA content in oil on the process inventory; therefore, it is capable of highlighting the characteristics of the technology. Simulated LC-GHG emissions per MJ of biodiesel fuel over varied (0–50 wt%) FFA content of feedstock oil shows that the product has lower LC-GHG emission than that of the fossil resource-based diesel fuel, and that it becomes even lower with a higher FFA content in the feedstock oil. Waste heat utilization would allow for the reduction of LC-GHG emissions to less than half of the fossil-based diesel, while large amounts of LC-GHGs are emitted through the conventional process to achieve fuel quality equivalent to that achieved by the IERC process.
