Corn Transforming Industry Environmental Analysis

JORGE HILBERT; ALEJO DANTUR; GALVAN. MARIA JOSE

Conferencia; RCN Conference on Pan American Biofuel and Bioenergy Sustainability; 2016

In the last five years a new generation of bioethanol plants in Argentina were born with multiple products production. From the technical point of view this plants are in line with new concepts linked to energy optimization and environment care. Evaluations methods employed in their study are in line with the bio refinery and bio economy concepts, which have different definitions according to the literature. Due to the strategic importance of this industry INTA through its rural engineering institute started a series of studies centered in the products analysis, the coproducts emission and the energy efficiencies. One case study is presented ACABIO Villa María Cordoba.The new study is based in a systemic approach looking at biofuels and bio products incorporating the whole transforming biomass chain identifying interactions between products. Complementary research analyzes the logistic and infrastructure aspects shared between the different products being produced. Local and international Environmental regulations and legal aspects define in which way this bio refinery industry is developing. Due the importance of the farm production stages of the crop a particular study was made regarding affected areas and yield variability within them using geographical information systems. Allocation factors were calculated according to the three most common methodologies used in the literature; mass balance, energy content and market price of each coproduct. Differences between them were significate in all the cases being considered in this paper.Due to EU emition reduction requirements and limits a specific study was made calculating the amount an emition reductions of the biofuels produced considering the default value defined at the directive 2009/28/CE. Overall contribution done by farm, industry and transport including overseas freight to Rotterdam grs.CO2eq/Mj were calculated. The incorporation of the carbon dioxide capture and purification plant improve the overall results of all the rest of the products. In the second year ISO 14025 guidelines were introduced and product category rules (PCR) and a specific EPD is proposed.