Increasing demand for biofuel production and global competition for the use of natural resources are key factors in finding new and environmentally safe routes for methanol production. In the present study, life cycle assessment was used to analyse the potential environmental impact and environmental cost of a novel methanol production process from wood compared to a conventional processes. Both the novel and the conventional process were divided into three stages: pre-treatment, gasification, and syngas cleaning and methanol synthesis. The environmental impacts were assessed and compared using Simapro 9 (ecoinvent 3.5 database) and the ReCiPe 2016 (World-H) midpoint method. The results, expressed per tonne methanol, showed that the impact categories of global warming potential (GWP) and marine ecotoxicity potential were lower in the novel process in comparison to the conventional process (48.2 kg CO2 eq. vs. 63.1 kg CO2 eq., and 4.55 kg 1,4-DCB vs. 6.35 kg 1,4-DCB respectively). However, the novel process had a higher environmental impact in the pre-treatment stage. The results of the sensitivity analysis showed that the GWP of the novel process increased from 48.2 kg CO2 eq. to 216 kg CO2 eq. due to the replacement of Na2CO3 by K2CO3. The human toxicity impact categories showed significant impact on environmental cost. These findings will help relevant industries to reduce their environmental impact and improve the production efficiency of methanol from wood.

Over 640 million people in Africa are expected to rely on solid-fuels for cooking by 2040. In Western Kenya, cooking inefficiently persists as a major cause of burden of disease due to household air pollution. Efficient biomass cooking is a local-based renewable energy solution to address this issue. The Life-Cycle Assessment tool Simapro 8.5 is applied for analyzing the environmental impact of four biomass cooking strategies for the Kisumu County, with analysis based on a previous energy modelling study, and literature and background data from the Ecoinvent and Agrifootprint databases applied to the region. A Business-As-Usual scenario (BAU) considers the trends in energy use until 2035. Transition scenarios to Improved Cookstoves (ICS), Pellet-fired Gasifier Stoves (PGS) and Biogas Stoves (BGS) consider the transition to wood-logs, biomass pellets and biogas, respectively. An Integrated (INT) scenario evaluates a mix of the ICS, PGS and BGS. In the BGS, the available biomass waste is sufficient to be upcycled and fulfill cooking demands by 2035. This scenario has the lowest impact on all impact categories analyzed followed by the PGS and INT. Further work should address a detailed socio-economic analysis of the analyzed scenarios.