From Agricultural (By-)Products To Jet Fuels: Carbon Footprint And Economic Performance

This research assesses thewell-to-tank (WTT) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and economic performance of an innovative bio-jet fuel via acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) fermentation. Dutch potato by-products fromthe food processing industry and sugar beets are explored as potential feedstocks. Four product systems differentiated by feedstocks, logistics and centralized/decentralized fermenters are investigated. For both feedstocks, it is found that a centralized large-scale fermentation is preferable to decentralized smallscale fermentation (25-30% less expensive and 5% lower WTT emissions). Once commercialization is reached, the cost and carbon performance of this novel bio-jet fuel could be similar to that of other alcohol-to-jet fuels. Depending on the feedstock and configuration considered, the GHG emission mitigation potential of this novel jetfuel was estimated between 41% and 52%. To meet the EU RED II 65% GHG reduction criterion, possible options could be using lowcarbon-intensive processing energy and hydrogen or storing permanently biogenic carbon dioxide from fermentation. (c) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).