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Life Cycle Analysis

Biofuel technologies continue to be researched and improved and biofuel policies are being debated and shaken up. Ultimately, success of large-scale biofuel deployment depends on biofuel economics in the marketplace and true biofuel sustainability in political and social context. This special section in Biotechnology for Biofuels presents a collection of articles in the areas of techno-economic analysis, sustainability analysis and life-cycle analysis of biofuels for road and aviation transportation applications. The articles cover a variety of biomass feedstocks, conversion technologies, and biofuel end uses along the whole biofuel supply chain. They address critical issues such as economic drivers for biofuel costs, greenhouse gas emissions, water use impacts, and indirect land use changes. The up-to-date research results on these topics from authors will help the biofuel community identify biofuel R&D opportunities and challenges and the policy community develop sound, consistent biofuel policies so that biofuels will indeed play an important role in pursuing long-term sustainability of the transportation sector globally.

  1. Xylan is a major hemicellulosic component in the cell walls of higher plants especially in the secondary walls of vascular cells which are playing important roles in physiological processes and overall mechani...

    Authors: Angelo G. Peralta, Sivasankari Venkatachalam, Sydney C. Stone and Sivakumar Pattathil
    Citation: Biotechnology for Biofuels 2017 10:245
  2. The GTAP model has been used to estimate biofuel policy induced land use changes and consequent GHG emissions for more than a decade. This paper reviews the history of the model and database modifications and ...

    Authors: Farzad Taheripour, Xin Zhao and Wallace E. Tyner
    Citation: Biotechnology for Biofuels 2017 10:191
  3. Development of biofuels is considered as one of the important ways to replace conventional fossil energy and mitigate climate change. However, rapid increase of biofuel production could cause other environment...

    Authors: Xiaomin Xie, Tingting Zhang, Liming Wang and Zhen Huang
    Citation: Biotechnology for Biofuels 2017 10:95
  4. The introduction of renewable jet fuel (RJF) is considered an important emission mitigation measure for the aviation industry. This study compares the well-to-wake (WtWa) greenhouse gas (GHG) emission performa...

    Authors: Sierk de Jong, Kay Antonissen, Ric Hoefnagels, Laura Lonza, Michael Wang, André Faaij and Martin Junginger
    Citation: Biotechnology for Biofuels 2017 10:64
  5. Ethanol production from lignocellulosic feedstocks (also known as 2nd generation or 2G ethanol process) presents a great potential for reducing both ethanol production costs and climate change impacts since ag...

    Authors: Tassia L. Junqueira, Mateus F. Chagas, Vera L. R. Gouveia, Mylene C. A. F. Rezende, Marcos D. B. Watanabe, Charles D. F. Jesus, Otavio Cavalett, Artur Y. Milanez and Antonio Bonomi
    Citation: Biotechnology for Biofuels 2017 10:50
  6. Alcohol-to-jet (ATJ) is one of the technical feasible biofuel technologies. It produces jet fuel from sugary, starchy, and lignocellulosic biomass, such as sugarcane, corn grain, and switchgrass, via fermentat...

    Authors: Guolin Yao, Mark D. Staples, Robert Malina and Wallace E. Tyner
    Citation: Biotechnology for Biofuels 2017 10:18