Life Cycle Assessment of Pelletized Loblolly Pine (Pinus taeda) Residues for Coal Co-Firing in Virginia

The goal of this study is to develop a real-world scenario life cycle with efficient, realistic, geologistics and minimum input demands. Woody biomass is projected to become a growing percentage of domestic electricity generation as a renewable fuel source. However, concerns persist regarding energy content, waste, emissions, ability to provide adequate biomass supply, and policies. Loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) is a short rotation woody crop grown in a substantial portion of the Southeastern United States for lumber and paper pulpwood. Once harvested, the fast-growing softwood can be delimbed and debarked leaving 20% of the biomass as underutilized residues. Pelletization and pulverized fuel combustion, direct coal cofiring, offer an energy pathway to decrease fossil fuel reliance and reduce carbon emissions. As a commercially scaled, cost-effective, and technologically feasible option to supplement coal power plants. Biomass coal cofiring must be evaluated by including residue acquisition and pelletization product stages to avoid emissions trade-offs. Evaluating the life cycle of loblolly pine wood residues for coal cofiring is necessary to target processes for improving environmental performance, understanding limitations of the feedstock for energy, and assessing sensitivity of varying loblolly pine-coal fuel blends. Using input parameters as a Virginia base case, this attributional life cycle assessment is designed in Simapro v8.5 software, supported by the EcoInvent v3.5 database, with eighteen midpoint indicators calculated using the ReCiPe (H) 2016 impact assessment method. The results of this study address environmental factors and, in the future, can be expanded to include energy-balancing and profitability.