3-09: Economic and environmental sustainability of bioethanol produced from various waste papers

Economic and environmental sustainability of bioethanol produced from various waste papers

As a significant fraction of municipal solid waste, paper and cardboard waste is a potential resource for the production of bioethanol. In the present research, bioethanol production processes from various waste papers (newspaper, office paper, cardboard and magazine) using Cellic Ctec 1 were evaluated from both economic and environmental standpoints. Base-case and two state-of-the-art cases processes (including dilute acid pre-treatment of office paper and oxidative lime pre-treatment of newspaper) were constructed using laboratory data, literature values, and expert consultations and simulated using AspenPlus^TM. In the economic feasibility analysis, the minimum bioethanol selling price at pump of whole supply chain for various cases was determined with the reference year of 2009 and compared with the petrol price. It showed bioethanol from cardboard as well as newspaper and office paper with & without pre-treatment were economically competitive with petrol and estimated 1.1-2.6 billion litres bioethanol per year can be potentially produced from collected waste papers in the UK. In the environmental assessment using a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach, bioethanol produced from newspaper, magazine and cardboard were found to be environmentally superior to petrol. However, sensitivity analyses suggested this conclusion can be affected significantly by the particular system boundary definition used.