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Water Consumption Footprint and Land Requirements of Large-Scale Alternative Diesel and Jet Fuel Production
journal contribution
posted on 2013-11-05, 00:00 authored by Mark D. Staples, Hakan Olcay, Robert Malina, Parthsarathi Trivedi, Matthew
N. Pearlson, Kenneth Strzepek, Sergey V. Paltsev, Christoph Wollersheim, Steven R. H. BarrettMiddle distillate
(MD) transportation fuels, including diesel and
jet fuel, make up almost 30% of liquid fuel consumption in the United
States. Alternative drop-in MD and biodiesel could potentially reduce
dependence on crude oil and the greenhouse gas intensity of transportation.
However, the water and land resource requirements of these novel fuel
production technologies must be better understood. This analysis quantifies
the lifecycle green and blue water consumption footprints of producing:
MD from conventional crude oil; Fischer–Tropsch MD from natural
gas and coal; fermentation and advanced fermentation MD from biomass;
and hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids MD and biodiesel from oilseed
crops, throughout the contiguous United States. We find that FT MD
and alternative MD derived from rainfed biomass have lifecycle blue
water consumption footprints of 1.6 to 20.1 Lwater/LMD, comparable to conventional MD, which ranges between 4.1
and 7.4 Lwater/LMD. Alternative MD derived from
irrigated biomass has a lifecycle blue water consumption footprint
potentially several orders of magnitude larger, between 2.7 and 22 600
Lwater/LMD. Alternative MD derived from biomass
has a lifecycle green water consumption footprint between 1.1 and
19 200 Lwater/LMD. Results are disaggregated
to characterize the relationship between geo-spatial location and
lifecycle water consumption footprint. We also quantify the trade-offs
between blue water consumption footprint and areal MD productivity,
which ranges from 490 to 4200 LMD/ha, under assumptions
of rainfed and irrigated biomass cultivation. Finally, we show that
if biomass cultivation for alternative MD is irrigated, the ratio
of the increase in areal MD productivity to the increase in blue water
consumption footprint is a function of geo-spatial location and feedstock-to-fuel
production pathway.
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irrigated biomass cultivationlifecycle water consumption footprintwater consumption footprintsalternative MDwater Consumption FootprintUnited StatesFTnovel fuel production technologiesland resource requirementsareal MD productivitygreenhouse gas intensityJet Fuel ProductionMiddle distillatecrude oilLMDwater consumption footprint
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