Life-cycle assessment of hydrogen production via catalytic gasification of wheat straw in the presence of straw derived biochar catalyst

The environmental footprints of H-2 production via catalytic gasification of wheat straw using straw-derived biochar catalysts were examined. The functional unit of 1 kg of H-2 was adopted in the system boundaries, which includes 5 processes namely biomass collection and pre-treatment units (P1), biochar catalyst preparation using fast pyrolysis unit (P2), two-stage pyrolysis-gasification unit (P3), products separation unit (P4), and H-2 distribution to downstream plants (P5). Based on the life-cycle assessment, the hot spots in this process were identified, the sequence was as follows: P4 > P2 > P1 > P3 > P5. The end-point impacts score for the process was found to be 93.4017 mPt. From benchmarking analysis, the proposed straw-derived biochar catalyst was capable of offering almost similar catalytic performance with other metal-based catalysts with a lower environmental impact.

Automated summary

This study examined the environmental footprints of H-2 production via catalytic gasification of wheat straw using straw-derived biochar catalysts. The hot spots in the process were identified, with product separation unit (P4) having the greatest environmental impact. The proposed biochar catalyst showed similar catalytic performance with metal-based catalysts but with lower environmental impact, as indicated by benchmarking analysis.