Life Cycle Performance of Cellulosic Ethanol and Corn Ethanol from a Retrofitted Dry Mill Corn Ethanol Plant

This study conducts a life cycle assessment of a simulated dry mill corn ethanol facility in California’s Central Valley retrofitted to also produce ethanol from corn stover, a cellulosic feedstock. The assessment examines three facility designs, all producing corn ethanol and wet distiller’s grains and solubles as a co-product: a baseline facility with no cellulosic retrofit, a facility retrofitted with a small capacity for stover feedstock, and a facility retrofitted for a large capacity of stover feedstock. Corn grain is supplied by rail from the Midwest, while stover is sourced from in-state farms and delivered by truck. Two stover feedstock supply scenarios are considered, testing harvest rates at 25 or 40 % of stover mass. Allocation is required to separate impacts attributable to co-products. Additional scenarios are explored to assess the effect of co-product allocation methods on life cycle assessment results for the two fuel products, corn ethanol and stover ethanol. The assessment tracks greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, energy consumption, criteria air pollutants, and direct water consumption. The GHG intensity of corn ethanol produced from the three facility designs range between 61.3 and 68.9 g CO2e/MJ, which includes 19.8 g CO2e/MJ from indirect land use change for Midwestern corn grain. The GHG intensity of cellulosic ethanol varies from 44.1 to 109.2 g CO2e/MJ, and 14.6 to 32.1 g CO2e/MJ in the low and high stover capacity cases, respectively. Total energy input ranges between 0.60 and 0.71 MJ/MJ for corn ethanol and 0.13 to 2.29 MJ/MJ for stover ethanol. This variability is the result of the stover supply scenarios (a function of harvest rate) and co-product allocation decisions.