Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is applied to biobased 1,3-propanediol (PDO) production. The cradle-to-factory gate system includes growing of corn, corn milling, converting cornstarch to glucose and fermentative production of PDO using a genetically modified biocatalyst. The LCA is of a preliminary biobased process design and is used to identify system improvement targets and benchmark life-cycle environmental performance. The analysis indicates that approximately 70% of nonrenewable energy is used in producing PDO from glucose. Of this, the largest part is used in purifying PDO. Biobased PDO is predicted to have significantly lower cradle-to-factory gate nonrenewable energy and climate change potential than PDO derived from ethylene oxide. PDO converted to polytrimethylene terephthalate (PTT) is predicted to outperform Nylon 6 in these same categories and also have lower NO_x emissions.
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