↓ Skip to main content

Influence of corn oil recovery on life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions of corn ethanol and corn oil biodiesel

Overview of attention for article published in Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts, November 2015
Altmetric Badge

About this Attention Score

  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (77th percentile)
  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (79th percentile)

Mentioned by

policy
2 policy sources
twitter
1 X user

Citations

dimensions_citation
21 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
66 Mendeley
You are seeing a free-to-access but limited selection of the activity Altmetric has collected about this research output. Click here to find out more.
Title
Influence of corn oil recovery on life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions of corn ethanol and corn oil biodiesel
Published in
Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts, November 2015
DOI 10.1186/s13068-015-0350-8
Pubmed ID
Authors

Zhichao Wang, Jennifer B. Dunn, Jeongwoo Han, Michael Q. Wang

Abstract

Corn oil recovery and conversion to biodiesel has been widely adopted at corn ethanol plants recently. The US EPA has projected 2.6 billion liters of biodiesel will be produced from corn oil in 2022. Corn oil biodiesel may qualify for federal renewable identification number (RIN) credits under the Renewable Fuel Standard, as well as for low greenhouse gas (GHG) emission intensity credits under California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard. Because multiple products [ethanol, biodiesel, and distiller's grain with solubles (DGS)] are produced from one feedstock (corn), however, a careful co-product treatment approach is required to accurately estimate GHG intensities of both ethanol and corn oil biodiesel and to avoid double counting of benefits associated with corn oil biodiesel production. This study develops four co-product treatment methods: (1) displacement, (2) marginal, (3) hybrid allocation, and (4) process-level energy allocation. Life-cycle GHG emissions for corn oil biodiesel were more sensitive to the choice of co-product allocation method because significantly less corn oil biodiesel is produced than corn ethanol at a dry mill. Corn ethanol life-cycle GHG emissions with the displacement, marginal, and hybrid allocation approaches are similar (61, 62, and 59 g CO2e/MJ, respectively). Although corn ethanol and DGS share upstream farming and conversion burdens in both the hybrid and process-level energy allocation methods, DGS bears a higher burden in the latter because it has lower energy content per selling price as compared to corn ethanol. As a result, with the process-level allocation approach, ethanol's life-cycle GHG emissions are lower at 46 g CO2e/MJ. Corn oil biodiesel life-cycle GHG emissions from the marginal, hybrid allocation, and process-level energy allocation methods were 14, 59, and 45 g CO2e/MJ, respectively. Sensitivity analyses were conducted to investigate the influence corn oil yield, soy biodiesel, and defatted DGS displacement credits, and energy consumption for corn oil production and corn oil biodiesel production. This study's results demonstrate that co-product treatment methodology strongly influences corn oil biodiesel life-cycle GHG emissions and can affect how this fuel is treated under the Renewable Fuel and Low Carbon Fuel Standards.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profile of 1 X user who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 66 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 66 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 15 23%
Researcher 10 15%
Student > Ph. D. Student 5 8%
Student > Bachelor 5 8%
Student > Doctoral Student 2 3%
Other 10 15%
Unknown 19 29%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 9 14%
Chemical Engineering 8 12%
Energy 6 9%
Engineering 5 8%
Environmental Science 3 5%
Other 14 21%
Unknown 21 32%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 7. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 04 April 2019.
All research outputs
#5,240,151
of 25,373,627 outputs
Outputs from Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts
#303
of 1,578 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#66,413
of 296,794 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts
#9
of 44 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,373,627 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 79th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,578 research outputs from this source. They receive a mean Attention Score of 4.9. This one has done well, scoring higher than 80% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 296,794 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 77% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 44 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 79% of its contemporaries.