A partial Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is conducted to investigate the life cycle impacts of a biorefinery designed to convert poplar tree chips into jet fuel via fermentation and subsequent hydrogenation. The goal of producing jet fuel from Populus (poplar) trees (bio-jet) is to create an alternative to petroleum based jet fuel (petro-jet). Currently no jet fuel producing biorefineries are in commercial operation and the results of this LCA will be used to assess a potential environmental impact that could result from scaling up the proposed system. Work is part of the Advanced Hardwood Biofuels Northwest project. The LCA does not include any proprietary information and is suitable for release to the public domain. Life cycle inventory assessment and conclusion are not included in this document.

The biorefinery in this LCA is assumed be located somewhere in the continental U.S and will produce jet fuel similar to Jet-A fuel with a high heating value (HHV) of 45.5 mega joule (MJ) / kilogram (kg) and a density of 0.820 kg/ liters (L). The biorefinery is designed to operate using 3200 bonne dry tonnes (BDt) of poplar chips per day (1.1 million BDt/yr). It is predicted to produce 300 L/ BDt (380 million L per year) of bio-jet fuel per year. The biorefinery is simulated in ASPEN-Plus v.2004.1chemical engineering software (Aspen Technology Inc., 2005). The LCA work is performed using SimaPro v.8.0 LCA software (Pre Consultants, 2012).