Analysis of methane yields from energy crops and agricultural by-products and estimation of energy potential from sustainable crop rotation systems in EU-27

Currently an increasing demand for renewable energy can be observed. A part of this demand could be covered by the production of energy from agrarian biomass. Due to the limited availability of arable land, food and feed production are starting to compete for agrarian resources. A way out of this dilemma is to develop concepts that are based on otherwise unused agrarian biomass like straw and include new technologies for the fermentation of lignocellulosic biomass. In this paper, the energy potentials of two different cropping systems are compared. In the energy-based crop rotation system all crops were used either for biogas or ethanol production. In the biorefinery-based approach, the various crops were used in cascades for the production of food as well as feed. Experimental laboratory work and field trials were combined to calculate energy and biomass yields of the crops under investigation. The results demonstrate that steam explosion pretreatment of wheat straw led to a 30% increase in the specific methane yield. The calculated energy output of the biorefinery-based crop rotation system amounted to a total of 126 GJ ha−1 year−1. Extrapolating this energy output to the total arable land of the EU-27 member states, 13,608 PJ of energy could be produced. Therefore, biorefinery-based crop rotation systems could provide approximately three times more energy to the European population than energy-based crop rotation systems.