Alonso-Fariñas, BernabéGallego Schmid, AlejandroGarcía Haro, PedroAzapagic, Adisa2023-05-292023-05-292018-11Alonso-Fariñas, B., Gallego Schmid, A., García Haro, P. y Azapagic, A. (2018). Environmental assessment of thermo-chemical processes for bio-ethylene production in comparison with bio-chemical and fossil-based ethylene. Journal of Cleaner Production, 202, 817-829. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.08.147.0959-65261879-1786)https://hdl.handle.net/11441/146761The use of biomass for production of chemicals is gaining interest because of its potential to contribute towards a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental benefits linked to the substitution of fossil resources. But, conversely to biofuels, studies focusing on environmental impacts of biomass-derived chemicals are scarce. This paper uses life cycle assessment to evaluate the environmental sustainability of bio-ethylene from poplar produced by the following three thermo-chemical routes: direct and indirect dehydration of ethanol and production of olefins via dimethyl ether. The indirect route is the best option for most impact categories for all three allocation methods considered: system expansion, economic and energy basis. However, the dimethyl ether-to-olefins route has the lowest global warming potential. In comparison to ethylene produced bio-chemically from sugar beet, the thermo-chemical indirect route has lower impacts for all categories except human, terrestrial and freshwater toxicities. All three thermo-chemical alternatives show a significant reduction in global warming potential (up to 105% in the case of dimethyl ether-to-olefins) and depletion of fossil fuels when compared to conventional ethylene production from fossil fuels. However, the results also suggest that bioethylene produced by any of the three thermo-chemical routes would lead to a significant increase in most other impact categories relative to fossil fuels. Therefore, while trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the overall environmental sustainability of bio-ethylene suffers from the increase in other environmental impacts.application/pdf27 p.engAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacionalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Bio-chemical productionClimate changeEnvironmental sustainabilityEthyleneLife cycle assessmentinfo:eu-repo/semantics/articleinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccesshttps://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.08.147