Biofuel scenarios in a water perspective: the global blue and green water footprint of road transport in 2030

The trend towards substitution of conventional transport fuels by biofuels requires additional water. The EU aims In the last two centuries, fossil fuels have been our major source of energy. However, issues concerning energy security and the quality of the environment have given an impulse to the development of alternative, renewable fuels. Particularly the transport sector is expected to steadily switch from fossil fuels to a larger fraction of biofuels - liquid transport fuels derived from biomass. Many governments believe that biofuels can replace substantial volumes of crude oil and that they will play a key role in diversifying the sources of energy supply in the coming decades. The growth of biomass requires water, a scarce resource. The link between water resources and (future) biofuel consumption, however, has not been analyzed in great detail yet. Existing scenarios on the use of water resources usually only consider the changes in food and livestock production, industry and domestic activity. The aim of this research is to assess the change in water use related to the expected increase in the use of biofuels for road transport in 2030, and subsequently evaluate the contribution to potential water scarcity. The study builds on earlier research on the relation between energy and water and uses the water footprint (WF) methodology to investigate the change in water demand related to a transition to biofuels in road transport. Information about this transition in each country is based on a compilation of different energy scenarios. The study distinguishes between two different bio-energy carriers, bio-ethanol and biodiesel, and assesses the ratio of fuel produced from selected first-generation energy crops per country. For ethanol these crops are sugar cane, sugar beet, sweet sorghum, wheat and maize. For biodiesel they are soybean, rapeseed, jatropha, and oil palm

Sudden Collapse of a Granular Cluster

Single clusters in a vibro-fluidized granular gas in N connected compartments become unstable at strong shaking. They are experimentally shown to collapse very abruptly. The observed cluster lifetime (as a function of the driving intensity) is analytically calculated within a flux model, making use of the self-similarity of the process. After collapse, the cluster diffuses out into the uniform distribution in a self-similar way, with an anomalous diffusion exponent 1/3.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. Figure quality has been reduced in order to decrease file-siz

Bifurcation Diagram for Compartmentalized Granular Gases

The bifurcation diagram for a vibro-fluidized granular gas in N connected compartments is constructed and discussed. At vigorous driving, the uniform distribution (in which the gas is equi-partitioned over the compartments) is stable. But when the driving intensity is decreased this uniform distribution becomes unstable and gives way to a clustered state. For the simplest case, N=2, this transition takes place via a pitchfork bifurcation but for all N>2 the transition involves saddle-node bifurcations. The associated hysteresis becomes more and more pronounced for growing N. In the bifurcation diagram, apart from the uniform and the one-peaked distributions, also a number of multi-peaked solutions occur. These are transient states. Their physical relevance is discussed in the context of a stability analysis.Comment: Phys. Rev. E, in press. Figure quality has been reduced in order to decrease file-siz

Minder mineralenverlies in de substraatteelt : een economische analyse van opties

De overheid wil stapsgewijs de lozingen van mineralen door glastuinbouwbedrijven met substraatteelt naar de omgeving terugdringen. In 2027 moeten deze lozingen vrijwel nul zijn. Onderzocht is welke maatregelen daartoe door de bedrijven genomen kunnen worden en welke kosten die met zich mee zullen brengen. The Dutch government wants to reduce the release (leaching) of nutrients from greenhouse horticultural firms with substrate-grown crops into the environment. These releases must be practically nil in 2027. This study examined which measures could be taken by the firms to comply with this objective and the associated costs

Design of biobased supply chains on a life cycle basis: A bi-objective optimization model and a case study of biobased polyethylene terephthalate (PET)

Bioplastics are considered a sustainable alternative to (partly) substitute fossil-based plastics. Nevertheless, it is still uncertain if the use of biomass for the production of bioplastics can mitigate the environmental impact of fossil-based plastics and simultaneously provide economic benefits. An optimization model is proposed to design biobased supply chain networks that account for economic (total costs) and environmental (greenhouse gas emissions) criteria. Life cycle costing and life cycle assessment were used to evaluate the economic and environmental costs of the biobased polyethylene terephthalate (PET) production using sugar beet and wheat as feedstock. The 100% biobased PET production evidenced higher economic and environmental costs than the 30% biobased PET production. The feedstock selection played a key role, whereas the use of wheat for both 30% and 100% biobased PET had the highest costs and greenhouse gas emissions. It is highlighted that the economic performance of the biobased terephthalic acid (PTA) production, the feedstock selection (sugar beet), and the carbon tax scenario (>100 €/t CO2) are key parameters for designing a sustainable biobased PET supply chain

Regionale landbouwcijfers in beeld Regio Noord : periode 1997-2007

Het LEI en het CBS publiceren al jaren de zogenaamde Land- en tuinbouwcijfers. De Directie Regionale Zaken van LNV heeft LEI gevraagd om regionale landbouwcijfers in beeld te brengen. Dat heeft geleid tot vier publicaties. De onderhavige is die van de regio Noord (Friesland, Groningen, Drenthe). Deze publicaties geven de stand van zaken weer in de verschillende sectoren en de belangrijkste trends in de afgelopen 10 jaar. Ook is per provincie steeds het relatieve belang van een sector te zien ten opzichte van geheel Nederland. De cijfers zijn geïllustreerd met grafieken en kaartjes die aangeven hoe de verschillende sectoren ruimtelijk zijn verdeel

Regionale landbouwcijfers in beeld Regio West : periode 1997-2007

Het LEI en het CBS publiceren al jaren de zogenaamde Land- en tuinbouwcijfers. De Directie Regionale Zaken van LNV heeft LEI gevraagd om regionale landbouwcijfers in beeld te brengen. Dat heeft geleid tot vier publicaties. De onderhavige is die van de regio West (Noord-Holland, Zuid-Holland, Utrecht, Flevoland). Deze publicatie geeft de stand van zaken weer in de verschillende sectoren en de belangrijkste trends in de afgelopen 10 jaar. Ook is per provincie steeds het relatieve belang van een sector te zien ten opzichte van geheel Nederland. De cijfers zijn geïllustreerd met grafieken en kaartjes die aangeven hoe de verschillende sectoren ruimtelijk zijn verdeel

The partially asymmetric zero range process with quenched disorder

We consider the one-dimensional partially asymmetric zero range process where the hopping rates as well as the easy direction of hopping are random variables. For this type of disorder there is a condensation phenomena in the thermodynamic limit: the particles typically occupy one single site and the fraction of particles outside the condensate is vanishing. We use extreme value statistics and an asymptotically exact strong disorder renormalization group method to explore the properties of the steady state. In a finite system of $L$ sites the current vanishes as $J \sim L^{-z}$, where the dynamical exponent, $z$, is exactly calculated. For $0<z<1$ the transport is realized by $N_a \sim L^{1-z}$ active particles, which move with a constant velocity, whereas for $z>1$ the transport is due to the anomalous diffusion of a single Brownian particle. Inactive particles are localized at a second special site and their number in rare realizations is macroscopic. The average density profile of inactive particles has a width of, $\xi \sim \delta^{-2}$, in terms of the asymmetry parameter, $\delta$. In addition to this, we have investigated the approach to the steady state of the system through a coarsening process and found that the size of the condensate grows as $n_L \sim t^{1/(1+z)}$ for large times. For the unbiased model $z$ is formally infinite and the coarsening is logarithmically slow.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figure