Title: Life cycle assessment of fuel production for biomass from dry land afforestation

Authors: Toshinori Kojima; Ayano Oguma; Hideki Suganuma; Kiyotaka Tahara

Addresses: Department of Materials and Life Science, Seikei University, 3-3-1 Kichijojikitamachi, Musashino, Tokyo 180-8633, Japan. ' Department of Materials and Life Science, Seikei University, 3-3-1 Kichijojikitamachi, Musashino, Tokyo 180-8633, Japan. ' Department of Materials and Life Science, Seikei University, 3-3-1 Kichijojikitamachi, Musashino, Tokyo 180-8633, Japan. ' National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), 16-1 Onogawa, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8569, Japan

Abstract: Biomass has been focused as a fuel resource because of its huge abundance and carbon-neutral characteristics. Thus, we attempted to use tree biomass as the resource to automotive fuel. From the global warming point of view, the biomass energy production from large-scale plantation is required, however, the land use should not be changed from crop field or forest land. In the present paper, the feasibility of the use in Japan of biofuel from woody biomass produced in large arid area of Western Australia, where the present authors demonstrated that the large-scale afforestation is possible even in an arid land when introducing water management and plantation technologies, has been evaluated using LCA method, by considering the actual condition of our afforestation area. Furthermore, some sensitivity analysis is conducted on the effects of composition ratio of electric power sources.

Keywords: Japan; biofuels; woody biomass; life cycle assessment; LCA: liquid fuels; dry land; afforestation; environmental engineering; Australia; fuel production.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGENVI.2012.049385

International Journal of Global Environmental Issues, 2012 Vol.12 No.2/3/4, pp.293 - 301

Received: 24 Jan 2011
Accepted: 21 Mar 2012
Published online: 28 Aug 2014 *

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