Technical Paper
Life Cycle Land Requirement, Energy Consumption and GHG Emissions of Biodiesel Derived from Microalgae and Jatropha curcas Seeds in China
2014-04-01
2014-01-1964
The aim of this study is to evaluate the land requirement, energy consumption and GHG (greenhouse gases) emissions of microalgal biodiesel (M-BD) and Jatropha curcas seeds (J-BD) based biodiesel from the perspective of life cycle assessment (LCA). ...The well to pump (WTP) stage for microalgal biodiesel had higher fossil energy requirement but lower petroleum energy consumption and GHG emissions compared to Jatropha curcas and conventional diesel (CD). The WTP energy efficiency for J-BD100 and M-BD 100 were 26% and 17.4%, respectively. ...The WTW results showed good performance for MBD100 on petroleum consumption and GHG emissions. The high fossil energy use for microalgae BD100 was attributed to the large inputs for microalgae growth, including fertilizer and process fuels.