JOURNAL OF NANJING FORESTRY UNIVERSITY ›› 2020, Vol. 44 ›› Issue (3): 216-224.doi: 10.3969/j.issn.1000-2006.201811023

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Review on sustainable development of forest⁃based biodiesel

LIU Shiqi(), JIA Liming()   

  1. The Key Laboratory for Silviculture and Conservation of Ministry of Education, National Energy R & D Center for Non?Food Biomass, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China
  • Received:2018-11-16 Revised:2019-05-08 Online:2020-05-30 Published:2020-06-11

Abstract:

As an essential part of forestry biomass energy, forest-based biodiesel has been developed rapidly in developing countries, such as China, India, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, etc. We have assessed the economical, environmental and social sustainability pertaining to the two most representative forest-based biodiesels, i.e., palm oil biodiesel and jatropha oil biodiesel. The assessment is based on 50 studies from 2010. Based on the work, we present that the overall sustainability of forest-based biodiesel is weak. It can be explained as follows: ① most of the forest-based biodiesel is economically infeasible, which is closely related to low yield, high cost, high price of feedstock, global change in the price of crude oil and low fiscal subsidies. ② The environmental performances vary across locations and cultivation systems. Most studies indicate significant reduction of 49%-85% in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to the use of fossil diesel; however, transforming high-carbon reserve lands such as rainforests into palm or jatropha plantations will cause huge GHG emissions.Furthermore, the use of these two kinds of biodiesel leads to more SO2 and NOx emissions than fossil diesel. The key factors for environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) are land-use change, yield, co-products utilization, and fertilization. ③ Energy is mainly consumed during farm and mill stages for forest-based biodiesel. Compared with fossil diesel, over 70% of non-renewable energy consumed can be saved. ④ The social benefit of forest-based biodiesel is not obvious. Social well-being and good working conditions are the factors which have been widely concerned. At present, very few studies quantify social impact of forest-based biodiesel comprehensively. Therefore, the feedstock supply system is a determinate factor for economic and environmental sustainability of forest-based biodiesel. The critical path to promote sustainability of forest-based biodiesel is to solve several key problems, i.e., selective improved variety, technical system of efficient cultivation, and utilization of high-value co-products, to establish poly-generation model. In addition, more researches on LCA are required with high accuracy requirement of data focused on the farm stage.

Key words: forest-based biodiesel, Elaeis gunieensis Jacqin., Jatropha curcas L., sustainability, life cycle assessment

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