Life Cycle Environmental and Economic Evaluation of Pyrolysis Oil Upgrade Technologies

Greenhouse gases are the leading contributors of climate change. The global rise of CO2 over the years, has urged an interest in government and researchers to find means of CO2 mitigation. Research has found that advanced biofuels can reduce CO2 emissions by up to 90%. Advanced biofuels can be produced from various routes, such as pyrolysis, gasification and torrefaction - with each route having limitations that hinder commercialization. A major limitation of pyrolysis-based advanced fuels also known as pyrolysis fuels, is their excessive cost of production due to their oxygenated structure; hence, their inability to be an infrastructure compatible market-ready fuel. In order to overcome this limitation, there is the need to deoxygenate the pyrolysis fuel. This thesis evaluates the environmental and economic sustainability of alternative pyrolysis oil upgrade technologies using life cycle assessment (LCA) and techno-economic analysis (TEA). The objective of this thesis is realized by completing three tasks: (1) examining the environmental and cost tradeoffs of the isolation and extraction of value added chemicals from tail gas reactive pyrolysis oil upgrade in comparison to the conventional hydrodeoxygenation upgrade (2) evaluating the implications of configuration, scale and hydrogen supply in alternative pyrolysis upgrade systems using life cycle assessment and (3) evaluating environmental, economic and technological aspects of alternative pyrolysis oil upgrading strategies Herein, we evaluate two emerging pyrolysis oil upgrade technologies; isolation and distillation of tail gas reactive pyrolysis (TGRP) oil and electrochemical deoxygenation (EDOx), and compare them to widely cited alternative technologies such as hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) and catalytic fast pyrolysis. We capitalize on some of the benefits of these emerging technologies; such as, the value-added coproducts in the TGRP process as well as the oxygen coproduced and the limited use of hydrogen in the EDOx process. Another main factor that sets these emerging technologies apart from the existing technologies is the smaller scale of 200MTPD in the TGRP process and 300 MTPD in the EDOx process compared to the larger scale (2000 MTPD) of the HDO process. In this thesis, we treat these co-products using system expansion in LCA and weigh in their value in the overall economics through measures like minimum fuel selling price (MFSP). The life cycle GHG emissions from the TGRP and EDOx processes, indicate reductions of 88% to 95% of emissions from petroleum-based fuels compared to 53% to 75% GHG reduction from the HDO processes and 89% to 90% from the catalytic pyrolysis processes. Also, The TEA results reveal that, even though the emerging technologies have a high minimum fuel selling price (MFSP) of $1.8 L-1 compared to the existing technologies of ($0.54 L-1 to $1.65 L-1), if the social cost of carbon is credited as a revenue, the TGRP of upgraded fuel cost can be reduced to$0.65 L-1, a price that is close to being economically competitive to petroleum- based fuels ($0.47 L-1 to$0.48 L-1).Ph.D., Environmental Engineering -- Drexel University, 201

Prevalence of Anaemia in Pregnant Women Attending the Antenatal Clinic in a Nigerian University Teaching Hospital

Two thousand, six hundred and fifty pregnant Nigerian women attending the antenatal booking clinic of the Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital (OOUTH), Sagamu between January 1996 and December 2000 were studied. Of these, 1,464 were anaemic (PCV = 33%), Hb = 11gm/dl) thus making the prevalence of anaemia in pregnancy in Sagamu, Nigeria 55.3%. Majority (88.9%) of these anaemic patients were mildly anaemic while 10.4% and 0.7% were moderately and severely anaemic respectively. Anaemia occurred in the second trimester in 69% of the anaemic patients. About three-quarters (72%) of these anaemic pregnant patients fall into the low socioeconomic class. The prevalence of anaemia in pregnancy decreased as the parity increased. The high prevalence rate of anaemia in pregnancy of 55.3% highlights the fact that anaemia is still a major problem in our pregnant women and further studies should be carried out to determine the causes so that more effective strategies can be designed to combat this menace. Key Words: Anaemia, pregnancy, prevalence, Sagamu. Nig. Medical Practitioner Vol. 44(2) 2003: 39-4

Deep Pressure Sores Complicating Labour; A Case Report

In the late 1960s and the mid 1970s the reproductive health indices from the developing countries, particularly the sub-Saharan Africa, were alarming and worrisome. The maternal and prenatal mortality rates were unacceptably high. Over 80% of all deliveries in these countries are attended to by untrained birth attendants. The United Nation, through its organ World Health Organization [W.H.O.] then conceived the programme of training Traditional birth attendants to care for delivery services of women at the grassroot. The strategy was to reduce maternal and neonatal mortality in communities with shortages of midwives and where pre-natal care and delivery services were lacking. To date, evidence in support of TBAs remains limited and conflicting. The maternal and prenatal indices continue to worsen and majority of these morbidities and mortalities are traceable to errors of judgments by TBAs during conducts of deliveries. Miss AA is here by presented to demonstrate an example of errors of judgments by TBAs during conducts of labour and deliveries resulting in deep pressure sores in the gluteal and sacral areas and obstetric fistula.Keywords: Deep Pressure Sores, Labour, Traditional Birth Attendants [Tbas

Is Urban Agriculture Financially Sustainable? An Exploratory Study of Small-Scale Market Farming in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Existing research on the economic sustainability of urban agriculture in the United States tends to emphasize a multifaceted conception of urban agriculture’s return on investment as a combination of revenue and less quantifiable positive external­ities. A more business-oriented advocacy literature, however, sees urban agriculture as a way to generate income for farmers and farm workers. The purpose of this study is twofold. First, we estimate the economic returns of urban farming in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, based on data obtained from urban farmers involved in market farming. Here our goal is to better understand the contribu­tion of market farming to the economic viability of urban agriculture. Second, we hope to improve understanding of how the farmers themselves perceive and navigate commensurabilities and tensions between predominantly market-oriented and more heavily social-service oriented forms of urban agriculture. Home to more than a dozen farms, Philadelphia is a suitable location for such an exploratory study of the financial sustainability of urban agriculture

Trends in commitments to correctional institutions: an analysis from 1935 to 1977

Bio-oil produced from fast pyrolysis of biomass is a promising substitute for crude oil that can meet climate change mitigation goals, but due to its high oxygen content, it requires upgrading to remove oxygen in order to be used as a transportation fuel. Hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) is one means of upgrading fast pyrolysis oil; however, its main limitation is its large hydrogen requirement. We evaluate an alternative electrochemical deoxygenation (EDOx) method that uses catalytic electrode membranes on a ceramic, oxygen-permeable support to generate hydrogen in situ for deoxygenation at the cathode and oxygen removal at the anode. We analyze the life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and scale effects of gas-phase upgrading of pyrolysis oil [300 t/day (MTPD)] using different configurations of EDOx and compare it with the large-scale HDO process (2000 MTPD). We observe that the EDOx configurations have lower total GHG emissions of 5–8.4 and 7.4–11 g of CO₂ equiv/MJ for vehicles operated with diesel and gasoline, respectively, compared to HDO (39 g of CO₂ equiv/MJ). Furthermore, the EDOx processes offers potentially 10 times more small-scale pyrolysis upgrading facilities in the United States compared to HDO, suggesting that small-scale on-site EDOx processes can reach more inaccessible forest biomass resources

Fuels and Chemicals from Equine-Waste-Derived Tail Gas Reactive Pyrolysis Oil: Technoeconomic Analysis, Environmental and Exergetic Life Cycle Assessment

Horse manure, the improper disposal of which, imposes considerable environmental costs, constitutes an apt feedstock for conversion to renewable fuels and chemicals when tail gas reactive pyrolysis (TGRP) is employed. TGRP is a modification of fast pyrolysis that recycles its noncondensable gases and produces a bio-oil low in oxygen concentration and rich in naphthalene. Herein, we evaluate the coproduction of phenol as a value-added renewable chemical, alongside jet-range fuels within distributed TGRP systems using techno-economic analysis and life cycle assessment. We investigate the metrics global warming potential (GWP), cumulative exergy demand (CExD), and cost for the conversion of 200 dry metric tons per day of horse manure to bio-oil and its subsequent upgrade to hydrocarbon fuel and phenolic chemicals. Assigning credits for the offset of the coproducts, the net GWP and CExD of TGRP jet fuel are 10 g of CO2 eq and 0.4 MJ per passenger kilometer distance traveled, respectively. These values are considerably lower than the GWP and CExD of petroleum-based aviation fuel. The minimum fuel selling price of the TGRP jet fuel ($1.35−$1.80 L−1) is estimated to be much greater than that of petroleum-based aviation fuel ($0.42 L−1), except under optimized fuel conversion and coproduct market conditions ($0.53−$0.79 L−1) when including a market price for carbon

Comprehensive analysis of overall H2 supply for different H2 carriers from overseas production to inland distribution with respect to economic, environmental, and technological aspects

The importance of introducing overseas hydrogen is globally emerging due to the imbalance in demand and supply of hydrogen in each country. In line with the trend, economic and environmental impact analyses have been actively conducted. However, economic, environmental, and technological aspects should be evaluated comprehensively. Thus, a comprehensive analytic hierarchy process with respect to the three criteria for the introduction of overseas hydrogen was conducted in this study. Here we show that the most feasible methods in each sector are commonly using a liquid organic hydrogen carrier, however, a liquid hydrogen and ammonia can be the most feasible depending on range of amount, distance and scale of economic criteria. Further case study for South Korea, which is expected to be the largest hydrogen importing country along with Japan and Europe, was conducted with deterministic and stochastic analyses, indicating feasible cases and future risks from variable ranges of priorities. (c) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved