Potential of lignocellulosic ethanol: centralized or decentralized production?

If liquid fossil fuels are to be replaced by renewable and sustainable alternatives, the application of lignocellulosic biomass for the production of biofuels cannot be avoided. All over the world, Ethanol constitutes the majority of biofuel use, and the prospect of its biological production from abundant lignocellulosic feedstocks is attractive. One of the major lignocellulosic feedstoks for ethanol production is wood. In this paper, the general situation of actual potential, existing forests and fields of lignocellulosic ethanol from wood was reviewed. Then, a case study was considered as an example to make the comparison between centralized and decentralized production methods. To reach this main goal, the whole life cycle of this type of ethanol from economic and environmental points of view was analyzed for the case study. Finally, after comparison between two scenarios, centralized and decentralized production, the reasonable production method from economic and environmental points of view was determined. Although a specific case was studied in this paper, the procedure used for comparing the two production methods and choosing the optimized one can be used for any other case in any other region.

Keywords:

lignocellulosic ethanol , centralized , decentralized