Economic and Environmental Evaluation of the Role for Waste CO2 From Ethanol Fermentation to Decarbonize Transportation in the US

Details

• Creators:
  Keogh, Niamh ; Abel, James ; Falter, Christoph ; Grimes, Gary ; Allroggen, Florian
• Corporate Creators:
  United States. Department of Transportation. Federal Aviation Administration. Center of Excellence for Alternative Jet Fuels and Environment
• Corporate Contributors:
  United States. Department of Transportation. Federal Aviation Administration. Office of Environment and Energy
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  ASCENT Aviation Fuels Biomass Fuels Carbon Capture And Storage Carbon Capture And Utilization Economic Analysis Electrofuels Greenhouse Gases Life Cycle Analysis Sustainable Transportation Waste Minimization

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• Publication/ Report Number:
  j.biombioe.2026.109096
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biombioe.2026.109096
• Resource Type:
  Journal Article
• Right Statement:
  Open Access; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Geographical Coverage:
  United States
• Corporate Publisher:
  Elsevier
• Abstract:
  Transitioning to alternative energy carriers is one of the primary options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions attributable to transportation. In the US, ethanol from corn grain covers 10.5% of gasoline demand from road transport today. Its production could be scaled-up further to also make sustainable aviation fuel. Additionally, the biogenic CO2 produced during fermentation could provide an option for carbon removal or for additional fuel production. In this study, we investigate the economic and environmental impacts of using the CO2 from ethanol fermentation either through capturing and sequestering the CO2 (CCS) or through the production of electrofuels (CCU), via fischer-tropsch and methanol-to-jet as conversion technologies. We find that CCS can increase the total offset CO2 by 135% compared to ethanol-to-jet plants while increasing the minimum selling price (MSP) of the produced biofuel by 5-7%. Comparatively, there is significant variation in the results for CCU pathways, increasing the total offset CO2 by 90 - 205%; however, the MSP of the electrofuels produced is 36 – 218% higher than the biofuels produced. This study highlights the trade-offs between fuel carbon intensity, costs, production volumes and output fuel mix for renewable fuel facilities, with the optimal configuration being dependent on the project's primary objectives.
• Content Notes:
  This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Please cite this article as: Niamh Keogh, James Abel, Christoph Falter, Gary Grimes, Florian Allroggen, Economic and environmental evaluation of the role for waste CO2 from ethanol fermentation to decarbonize transportation in the US, Biomass and Bioenergy, Volume 210, 2026, 109096, ISSN 0961-9534, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biombioe.2026.109096.
• Format:
  PDF
• Funding:
  13-C-AJFE-MIT-096
• Collection(s):
  Federal Aviation Administration
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:838cadee48b4e2cbb227972257c4ce651b6b70707c2413024223830d0e61a1b0ae152267e9a65e67b565ef5b621347b95869923d6f552eebf2229e2c57913783
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/89579/dot_89579_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 4.74 MB ]