scholarly journals Availability and Environmental Performance of Wood for a Second-Generation Biorefinery

Forests ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 1609
Author(s):  
Cecilia Rachid-Casnati ◽  
Fernando Resquin ◽  
Leonidas Carrasco-Letelier

The current global climate change, the 2030 Agenda, and the planetary boundaries have driven new development strategies, such as the circular economy, bioeconomy, and biorefineries. In this framework, this study analyzes the potential availability and sustainability of the wood supply chain for a small-scale biorefinery aiming at producing 280–300 L of bioethanol per ton of dry biomass, consuming 30,000 t of dry biomass per year harvested in a 50 km radius. This wood production goal was assessed from Eucalyptus grandis stands planted for solid wood in northeastern Uruguay. Moreover, to understand the environmental performance of this biomass supply chain, the energy return on investment (EROI), carbon footprint (CF), and potential soil erosion were also assessed. The results showed that the potential wood production would supply an average of 81,800 t of dry mass per year, maintaining the soil erosion below the upper threshold recommended, an EROI of 2.3, and annual CF of 1.22 kg CO2−eq m−3 (2.6 g CO2−eq MJ−1). Combined with the environmental performance of the bioethanol biorefinery facility, these results would show acceptable values of sustainability according to EU Directive 2009/28/ec because the bioethanol CF becomes 1.7% of this petrol’s CF.

Author(s):  
Cecilia Rachid-Casnati ◽  
Fernando Resquín ◽  
Leonidas Carrasco-Letelier

The current Global Climate Change, the 2030 Agenda and the Planetary boundaries have driven new development strategies, such as the circular economy, bioeconomy and biorefineries. In this framework, this study analyzes the potential availability and sustainability of the wood supply chain for a small-scale biorefinery aiming at producing 280–300 L of bioethanol per ton dry biomass, consuming 30,000 t of dry biomass per year harvested in a 50 km radius. This wood production goal was assessed from Eucalyptus grandis stands planted for solid wood in northeastern Uruguay. Moreover, to understand the environmental performance of this biomass supply chain, the energy return on investment (EROI), carbon footprint (CF) and potential soil erosion were also assessed. The results showed that the potential wood production would supply an average of 81,800 t of dry mass per year, maintaining the soil erosion below the upper threshold recommended, an EROI of 2.3 and annual CF of 1.22 kg CO2-eq m–3 (2.6 g CO2-eq MJ–1). Combined with the environmental performance of the bioethanol biorefinery facility, these results would show acceptable values of sustainability according to EU Directive 2009/28/ec because the bioethanol CF becomes 1.7% of this petrol’s CF.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. e0250018
Author(s):  
Jiacheng Zhang ◽  
Jianli Luo ◽  
Jia Li

Agro-food supply chain integration (ASCI) plays a growingly important role in the stable and sustainable development of agriculture. However, it is challenging for core firms to integrate the small-scale and scatted farmers due to complex transaction processes and volatile relationships in China. Agricultural co-operatives are organizations that unite farmers’ power and help them achieve economic benefits. Our research focuses on ASCI from the perspective of co-operatives. A comprehensive cooperative framework, including trinity co-operatives and trinity federations, is conducted to figure out the position and process of agricultural co-operatives in ASCI, while QCA provides detailed collaborative patterns for agricultural co-operatives to adopt. Results show that agricultural co-operatives can achieve high economic and social/environmental performance when participating in ASCI. This study further completes the ASCI literature and offers many managerial and academic implications to co-operatives’ members and policy-makers.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (21) ◽  
pp. 9090
Author(s):  
Jungeun Lee ◽  
Hye-Young Joo

The purpose of this study is to determine whether the support of top management significantly improves the level of environmental collaboration with participating companies upstream and downstream of the green supply chain and the impact on environmental performance. The results of the empirical analysis of 301 companies that are establishing a green supply chain are as follows. First, top management’s support positively affects the level of collaboration with suppliers and customers in the green supply chain. Secondly, support from top management has a direct impact on the company’s environmental performance. Thirdly, the environmental collaboration of participating companies partially plays a mediation role between the support of top management and the environmental performance. This study has significance in that it analyzes the theoretical mechanism of top management’s support for environmental collaboration with participating companies, leading to environmental performance, and draws implications.


Symmetry ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 549 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zilong Song ◽  
Shiwei He ◽  
Baifeng An

This paper investigated, for the first time, the game and coordination of a dual-channel, three-layered, green fresh produce supply chain, with regard to its economic, social, and environmental performance. Considering that the market demand is dual-channel priced and sensitive to the degree of greenness and the freshness-level, four game models, under different scenarios have been established. These included a centralized scenario, a decentralized scenario, and two contractual scenarios. The equilibrium solutions under the four scenarios were characterized. From the perspective of a sustainable development, the economic, social, and environmental performance of the supply chain was analyzed. To enhance the supply chain performance, two contract mechanisms were designed and the conditions for a multi-win outcome were obtained. Accordingly, many propositions and management implications were provided. The results showed that, (1) compared to the centralized supply chain case, the performance of the decentralized supply chain case is inferior; (2) in addition to increasing the concentration of the supply chain decisions, the two contracts proposed can effectively coordinate the green supply chain and improve its sustainable performance; and (3) the performance of the supply chain is positively driven by the consumers’ sensitivity to greenness degree and the freshness level of fresh produce. This paper fills a research gap and helps the participants of the channel recognize the operational decision principle of a complex green supply chain, in order to achieve a higher and a long-term sustainable-development performance.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (8) ◽  
pp. 2263
Author(s):  
Mahmood Ebadian ◽  
Shahab Sokhansanj ◽  
David Lee ◽  
Alyssa Klein ◽  
Lawrence Townley-Smith

In this study, an inter-continental agricultural pellet supply chain is modeled, and the production cost and price of agricultural pellets are estimated and compared against the recent cost and price of wood pellets in the global marketplace. The inter-continental supply chain is verified and validated using an integration of an interactive mapping application and a simulation platform. The integrated model is applied to a case study in which agricultural pellets are produced in six locations in Canada and shipped and discharged at the three major ports in Western Europe. The cost of agricultural pellets in the six locations is estimated to be in the range of EUR 92–95/tonne (CAD 138–142/tonne), which is comparable with the recent cost of wood pellets produced in small-scale pellet plants (EUR 99–109/tonne). The average agricultural pellet price shipped from the six plants to the three ports in Western Europe is estimated to be in a range of EUR 183–204 (CAD 274–305/tonne), 29–42% more expensive that the average recent price of wood pellets (EUR 143/tonne) at the same ports. There are several potential areas in the agricultural pellet supply chains that can reduce the pellet production and distribution costs in the mid and long terms, making them affordable supplement to the existing wood pellet markets. Potential economic activities generated by the production of pellets in farm communities can be significant. The generated annual revenue in the biomass logistics system in all six locations is estimated to be about CAD 21.80 million. In addition, the logistics equipment fleet needs 176 local operators with a potential annual income of CAD 2.18 million.


Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 432
Author(s):  
Robin Gutting ◽  
Ralf-Uwe Syrbe ◽  
Karsten Grunewald ◽  
Ulf Mehlig ◽  
Véronique Helfer ◽  
...  

Mangrove forests provide a large variety of ecosystem services (ES) to coastal societies. Using a case study focusing on the Ajuruteua peninsula in Northern Brazil and two ES, food provisioning (ES1) and global climate regulation (ES2), this paper proposes a new framework for quantifying and valuing mangrove ES and allow for their small-scale mapping. We modelled and spatialised the two ES from different perspectives, the demand (ES1) and the supply (ES2) side respectively. This was performed by combining worldwide databases related to the global human population (ES1) or mangrove distribution and canopy height (ES2) with locally derived parameters, such as crab catches (ES1) or species-specific allometric equations based on local estimates of tree structural parameters (ES2). Based on this approach, we could estimate that the area delivers the basic nutrition of about 1400 households, which equals 2.7 million USD, and that the mangrove biomass in the area contains 2.1 million Mg C, amounting to 50.9 million USD, if it were paid as certificates. In addition to those figures, we provide high-resolution maps showing which areas are more valuable for the two respective ES, information that could help inform management strategies in the future.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 22
Author(s):  
Giulio Sperandio ◽  
Andrea Acampora ◽  
Vincenzo Civitarese ◽  
Sofia Bajocco ◽  
Marco Bascietto

The delivery of biomass products from the production place to the point of final use is of fundamental importance within the constitution of energy chains based on biomass use as renewable energy source. In fact, transport can be one of the most economically expensive operations of the entire biomass energy production process. In this work, a geographic identification, through remote sensing and photo-interpretation, of the different biomass sources was used to estimate the potential available biomass for energy in a small-scale supply chain. The economic sustainability of transport costs was calculated for different types of biomass sources available close to a biomass power plant of a small-scale energy supply chain, in central Italy. The proposed analysis allows us to highlight and visualize on the map the areas of the territory characterized by greater economic sustainability in terms of lower transport costs of residual agroforestry biomass from the collection point to the final point identified with the biomass power plant. The higher transport cost was around € 40 Mg−1, compared to the lowest of € 12 Mg−1.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 1383-1402 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Davini ◽  
Jost von Hardenberg ◽  
Susanna Corti ◽  
Hannah M. Christensen ◽  
Stephan Juricke ◽  
...  

Abstract. The Climate SPHINX (Stochastic Physics HIgh resolutioN eXperiments) project is a comprehensive set of ensemble simulations aimed at evaluating the sensitivity of present and future climate to model resolution and stochastic parameterisation. The EC-Earth Earth system model is used to explore the impact of stochastic physics in a large ensemble of 30-year climate integrations at five different atmospheric horizontal resolutions (from 125 up to 16 km). The project includes more than 120 simulations in both a historical scenario (1979–2008) and a climate change projection (2039–2068), together with coupled transient runs (1850–2100). A total of 20.4 million core hours have been used, made available from a single year grant from PRACE (the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe), and close to 1.5 PB of output data have been produced on SuperMUC IBM Petascale System at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) in Garching, Germany. About 140 TB of post-processed data are stored on the CINECA supercomputing centre archives and are freely accessible to the community thanks to an EUDAT data pilot project. This paper presents the technical and scientific set-up of the experiments, including the details on the forcing used for the simulations performed, defining the SPHINX v1.0 protocol. In addition, an overview of preliminary results is given. An improvement in the simulation of Euro-Atlantic atmospheric blocking following resolution increase is observed. It is also shown that including stochastic parameterisation in the low-resolution runs helps to improve some aspects of the tropical climate – specifically the Madden–Julian Oscillation and the tropical rainfall variability. These findings show the importance of representing the impact of small-scale processes on the large-scale climate variability either explicitly (with high-resolution simulations) or stochastically (in low-resolution simulations).


2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (6) ◽  
pp. 486-505 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Tukamuhabwa ◽  
Mark Stevenson ◽  
Jerry Busby

Purpose In few prior empirical studies on supply chain resilience (SCRES), the focus has been on the developed world. Yet, organisations in developing countries constitute a significant part of global supply chains and have also experienced the disastrous effects of supply chain failures. The purpose of this paper is therefore to empirically investigate SCRES in a developing country context and to show that this also provides theoretical insights into the nature of what is meant by resilience. Design/methodology/approach Using a case study approach, a supply network of 20 manufacturing firms in Uganda is analysed based on a total of 45 interviews. Findings The perceived threats to SCRES in this context are mainly small-scale, chronic disruptive events rather than discrete, large-scale catastrophic events typically emphasised in the literature. The data reveal how threats of disruption, resilience strategies and outcomes are inter-related in complex, coupled and non-linear ways. These interrelationships are explained by the political, cultural and territorial embeddedness of the supply network in a developing country. Further, this embeddedness contributes to the phenomenon of supply chain risk migration, whereby an attempt to mitigate one threat produces another threat and/or shifts the threat to another point in the supply network. Practical implications Managers should be aware, for example, of potential risk migration from one threat to another when crafting strategies to build SCRES. Equally, the potential for risk migration across the supply network means managers should look at the supply chain holistically because actors along the chain are so interconnected. Originality/value The paper goes beyond the extant literature by highlighting how SCRES is not only about responding to specific, isolated threats but about the continuous management of risk migration. It demonstrates that resilience requires both an understanding of the interconnectedness of threats, strategies and outcomes and an understanding of the embeddedness of the supply network. Finally, this study’s focus on the context of a developing country reveals that resilience should be equally concerned both with smaller in scale, chronic disruptions and with occasional, large-scale catastrophic events.


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