Journal
COMMUNICATIONS IN NONLINEAR SCIENCE AND NUMERICAL SIMULATION
Volume 14, Issue 5, Pages 2450-2461Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.cnsns.2007.08.011
Keywords
Corn-ethanol; Exergy; Renewable energy; Ecological thermodynamics
Categories
Funding
- Beijing Natural Science Foundation [806102]
- State Key Program for Basic Research (973 Program) [2006CB403304, 2005CB724204]
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The cumulative exergetic method is used in this study to identify the renewability of the total corn-ethanol production in China when capturing all natural nonrenewable resources consumed in the integrated process including agricultural crop production, corn transportation, industrial conversion and waste treatment. A modified exergy-based indicator is thereby proposed to quantify the renewability of corn-ethanol production process. For the conditions prevailing in China, the renewability indicator as suggested by Berthiaume et al. is calculated to be -4.58, denoting the production process is highly nonrenewable. In addition, a novel indicator is also presented to reveal the environmental cost-effectiveness of the corn-ethanol process as supplement to the renewability indicator. Finally, the sensitivity analysis shows that the defined system boundaries, electricity-generation structure of the country, and technological constraints and choices of production process influence the renewability evaluation results. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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