Life Cycle Assessment of Large-scale Compressed Bio-natural Gas Production in China: A Case Study on Manure Co-digestion with Corn Stover

Abstract

Compressed bio-natural gas (CBG) production from large-scale systems has been recognized as promising because of the abundance of manure and crop residue feedstocks and its environmental friendliness. This study is a life cycle assessment using the local database of an operating large-scale CBG system of manure co-digestion with corn stover in China and eBalance software. The results showed that the system’s Primary Energy Input to Output (PEIO) ratio was 20%. Its anaerobic digestion process was the main contributor to energy consumption, accounting for 76%. Among the six environmental impacts investigated in this study, the global warming potential (GWP) was the major environmental impact, and the digestate effluent management process was the main contributor to the GWP, accounting for 60%. The mitigation potential of the system, compared with reference case for GWP, was 3.19 kg CO2-eq for 1 m3 CBG production. In the future, the GWP mitigation could be 479 × 106 metric tons CO2-eq with 150 × 109 m3 yr−1 CBG production from the entire China. This study provides a reference on large-scale CBG production system for establishing a localized life cycle assessment inventory database in China.