Sustainability aspects of biobased applications : comparison of different crops and products from the sugar platform BO-12.05-002-008

In this study different uses of biomass are compared. In order to allow for a systematic comparison the study focuses on three different chemicals that can be produced from sugar. In this way it is also, in principle, possible to compare different crops for the production of the same product. The study focuses on the production of PLA (polylactic acid, a bioplastic), ethanol, and biopolyethylene (bio-PE, which is produced via ethanol). These three products can presently be produced from biomass and therefore form realistic cases. All three products are produced from sugars, and thus the systems can be decoupled at the sugar step. The sugar can be produced from different crops. In this study five different crops are compared: wheat, maize, sugar beet, sugar cane and Miscanthus. The sustainability aspects that we studied are non-renewable energy use (NREU), greenhouse gas (GHG) emission in the crop-product chain and direct land use for producing the bio-materials