title: Life Cycle Assessment of second generation bioethanol produced from low-input dedicated crops of Arundo donax L.
abstract: This work presents a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of bioethanol (EtOH) from perennial Arundo donax L. feedstock. A "cradle-to-wheel" approach was applied considering primary data for the cultivation of dedicated crops on hilly marginal lands and innovative "second generation technologies" for feedstock conversion into EtOH. The goals of the study were to: (i) quantify impacts of lignocellulosic EtOH production/use chain, (ii) identify hotspots and (iii) compare the environmental performance of different bioethanol-gasoline vehicles, E10 (10% EtOH and 90% gasoline) and E85 (85% EtOH and 15% gasoline), with a conventional gasoline passenger car. Results for E85 underlined that the feedstock production and the use phase were the prevailing contributors, whilst for E10 the gasoline production phase shared the largest part of impacts. The comparison showed that vehicles using lignocellulosic bioethanol have potentially significant benefits on global warming, ozone depletion, photochemical oxidant formation and fossil depletion in respect to conventional passenger car.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Biologia, Università di Napoli Federico II, Italy. Electronic address: amalia.zucaro@unina.it.
authors.forename: Amalia
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Zucaro
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Biologia, Università di Napoli Federico II, Italy.
authors.forename: Annachiara
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Forte
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Biotecnologie, Chimica e Farmacia, Universitá di Siena, Italy.
authors.forename: Riccardo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Basosi
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Agraria, Università di Napoli Federico II, Italy.
authors.forename: Massimo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fagnano
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Biologia, Università di Napoli Federico II, Italy; Laboratorio di Urbanistica e di Pianificazione del Territorio (LUPT), Università di Napoli Federico II, Italy.
authors.forename: Angelo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Fierro
mesh_terms: D056804:Biofuels; D018556:Crops, Agricultural / Q000378:metabolism*; D004777:Environment; D000431:Ethanol / Q000378:metabolism*; D005742:Gasoline; D057232:Global Warming; D006109:Poaceae / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D056804:Biofuels; D005742:Gasoline; D000431:Ethanol
keywords: Bioethanol; E10; E85; Environmental impact; Feedstock production