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Published in: Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy 4/2017

01-10-2016 | Original Paper

Life cycle assessment of palm-derived biodiesel in Taiwan

Authors: Sumit Maharjan, Wei-Cheng Wang, Heng Yi Teah

Published in: Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy | Issue 4/2017

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Abstract

In Taiwan, due to the limited capacity of waste cooking oil, palm oil has been viewed as the potential low-cost imported feedstock for producing biodiesel, in the way of obtaining oil feedstock in Malaysia and producing biodiesel in Taiwan. This study aims to evaluate the cradle-to-grave life cycle environmental performance of palm biodiesel within two different Asian countries, Malaysia and Taiwan. The phases of the life cycle such as direct land-use-change impact, plantation and milling are investigated based on the Malaysia case and those of refining, and fuel production as well as engine combustion is based on Taiwan case. The greenhouse gas (GHG) emission and energy consumption for the whole life cycle were calculated as −28.29 kg CO2-equiv. and +23.71 MJ/kg of palm-derived biodiesel. We also analyze the impacts of global warming potential (GWP) and the payback time for recovering the GHG emissions when producing and using biodiesel. Various scenarios include (1) clearing rainforest or peat-forest; (2) treating or discharging palm-oil-milling effluent (POME) are further developed to examine the effectiveness of improving the environmental impacts

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Metadata
Title
Life cycle assessment of palm-derived biodiesel in Taiwan
Authors
Sumit Maharjan
Wei-Cheng Wang
Heng Yi Teah
Publication date
01-10-2016
Publisher
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Published in
Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy / Issue 4/2017
Print ISSN: 1618-954X
Electronic ISSN: 1618-9558
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-016-1290-0

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