Promoting Bioeconomy for Sustainable Food-Energy-Water Systems: The Need of Interdisciplinary Research from a Data Point of View

Transcription

1 Promoting Bioeconomy for Sustainable Food-Energy-Water Systems: The Need of Interdisciplinary Research from a Data Point of View Yuan Yao, Richard Venditti, Steve Kelley Department of Forest Biomaterials NCSU Database Integration Workshop: Building the Data Capacity for Food- Energy-Water (FEW) Research Sept. 11, 2018

2 The Critical Role of Biomass in FEW A Example of Forest Energy Sources fossil fuels Energy sources for heating and cooking in developing countries Biofuels Water A key to water purification and delivery. Forest and mountain ecosystems serve as source areas for the largest amounts of renewable freshwater supply 57 and 28 % of total runoff, respectively. Food Important in maintaining soil and water that support sustainable agriculture Providing habitats for the biological interactions that maintain crops, livestock, and wildlife Mitigating impacts of climate change and extreme weather Sources: Tidwell, T.L. J Environ Stud Sci (2016) 6: Quantifying the water-energy-food nexus: current status and trends Y Chang, G Li, Y Yao, L Zhang, C Yu - Energies, 2016

3 Key Questions What are sustainable pathways to produce and use bioenergy/bioproducts with minimum environmental impacts and maximum economic and societal benefits? How to promote bioceconomy to improve resource efficiency of existing water, energy, and food systems? What do we need Quantification of Impacts Identification of Drivers Insightful Information to Decision Makers

4 Life Cycle Assessment A concept and methodology to evaluate the environmental effects of a product or activity holistically, by analyzing the whole life cycle of a particular product, process, or activity (U.S. EPA, 1993).

5 The Challenges of Using LCA to Understand the Impacts of Bio-products on FEW Temporal and geospatial dynamics A large number of combinations of different biomass types, conversion technologies, and bioproducts.

6 Research Focus Challenges LCA Lack of Process-Based Data Temporal Dynamics Geospatial Dynamics Machine Learning Agent-Based Modeling System Dynamics Geographic Information Systems

7 Case Study 1: Understanding the Dynamic Environmental Impacts of Agriculture Systems Integrating ABM and LCA

8 Understanding the Dynamic Environmental Impacts of Agriculture Systems Lan, K., Yao, Y.* (2018) Integrating Life cycle assessment and agent-based modeling: a dynamic modeling framework for sustainable agriculture systems, Environmental Science and Technology ( in preparation)

9 Understanding the Dynamic Environmental Impacts of Agriculture Systems Farm (agents) size and location of 1,000 farms in 10,000 by 10,000 raster, where one raster presents one-acre area Lan, K., Yao, Y.* (2018) Integrating Life cycle assessment and agent-based modeling: a dynamic modeling framework for sustainable agriculture systems, Environmental Science and Technology ( in preparation)

10 Effects of Feedback Delay Lan, K., Yao, Y.* (2018) Integrating Life cycle assessment and agent-based modeling: a dynamic modeling framework for sustainable agriculture systems, Environmental Science and Technology ( in preparation)

11 Case Study 2: Biochar in Supporting Sustainable FEW Integrating LCA and Machine Learning

12 Biochar in Supporting Sustainable FEW

13 Activated Carbon One of Biochar Applications The effectiveness of applications in FEW depends on properties of activated carbon, that are driven by biomass quality, conversion technologies, and process operations. A variety of biomass feedstock available with large variations in composition and quality

14 LCA and Machine Learning Prediction of Life Cycle Inventory data of using different biomass to produce activated carbon by integrating LCA and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) Preliminary results of the prediction of surface area of activated carbon versus experimental results Liao, M., Kelley, S. and Yao, Y.* (2018) Artificial neural network based modeling for the prediction of yield and surface area of activated carbon from steam activation, Journal of Bioresource Technology (in preparation)

15 Case Study 3: Integrating Geospatial Data with LCA

16 Corn Grain Farmland Collection Basket Radius: 76 miles Biorefinery in Hoke County, NC serves as the case study Hays Tyler, MS Thesis, 2016, NCSU Department of Forest Biomaterials 16

17 NC Corn Grain - Respiratory Effects Potential Farmland Establishment Feedstock Maint. & Harvest Feedstock Transportation Ethanol Conversion Ethanol Distribution 17

18 Other Useful Information Geospatial Data Might Provide Classification via satellite image using supervised machine learning Random Forest Zhenzhen Zhang, Kathryn Stevenson, Katherine Martin, Yuan Yao (2018), in preparation

19 Other Useful Information Geospatial Data Might Provide Building feature Tree feature Lawn = Random Forest classified Impervious surface Pond Zhenzhen Zhang, Kathryn Stevenson, Katherine Martin, Yuan Yao (2018), in preparation

20 Open Questions What infrastructure do we need to have to promote data sharing/integration across disciplines? What new insights could be generated by integrating and synthesizing data that are typically used in different disciplines? Is there an mechanism we can have in universities or regional levels to promote interdisciplinary research related to FEW?