Abstract
When selecting economically and environmentally advantageous genotypes for domestication in a biofuel supply chain, variability of cell-wall composition within a feedstock population and its impact on biorefinery metrics must be understood. We performed a life cycle assessment (LCA) on a poplar-to-ethanol supply chain to quantify global warming potential and cumulative energy demand as affected by variable carbohydrate content in a large representative natural variant population of Populus trichocarpa. The results showed that both environmental metrics decrease with increasing tree size and with increasing biomass carbohydrate content. These trends parallel prior economic results and provide clear direction to breeders or genetic engineers when improving poplar cultivars.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Biofuels, Bioproducts and Biorefining |
| DOIs | |
| State | Accepted/In press - 2025 |
Funding
This material is based upon work supported by the Center for Bioenergy Innovation (CBI), U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Biological and Environmental Research Program under Award Number ERKP886. This work was authored in part by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory for the US Department of Energy (DOE), operated under Contract No. DE‐AC36‐08GO28308. Funding was provided by US Department of Energy Office of Science. The views expressed in the article do not necessarily represent the views of the DOE or the US government. The US government retains, and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the US government retains a nonexclusive, paid‐up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this work, or allow others to do so, for US government purposes.
Keywords
- Populus trichocarpa
- bioenergy crops
- bioethanol production
- composition analysis
- cumulative energy demand
- environmental metric
- feedstock variability
- global warming potential
- life cycle assessment
- techno-economic analysis
- yield variation