Study Of Water Footprint Of Coal-based Fuels With Life Cycle Assessment

There is a great demand of petroleum products like gasoline and diesel with the rapid growth of the amount of cars in China. However, China is one of the largest importers of petroleum because of the lack of petroleum. In the other side, China is rich in coal resource which provides the possibility to produce coal-based fuels. Coal-based fuels are liquid fuels produced from coal which can replace gasoline and diesel for cars. There are mainly four types of coal-based fuels: direct coal to liquid fuel; indirect coal to liquid fuel; coal-based methanol; coal-based dimethyl ether. But the production of coal-based fuels has brought some problems like large water consumption and water pollution. In this article, the water footprints of coal-based fuels are studied based on life cycle assessment theory, including blue water footprint and grey water footprint.The results show that: 1. the water footprint of thermal power is much higher than that of coal because thermal power is secondary energy and coal is primary energy. 2. The blue water footprint of coal-based fuels is 2 to 3 times as that of gasoline which means that the production of coal-based fuels consumes more water than the production of gasoline. 3. The grey water footprint of coal-based fuels is 4 to 6 times as that of gasoline which means that the production of coal-based fuels causes more water pollution than the production of gasoline. 4. Process grey water footprint plays an important role in the grey water footprint and the life cycle assessment theory is a reasonable method for the analysis of water footprint.In this article, the water footprint impact on regions has been considered. As a result of developing coal-based fuels, there is a large water impact on the 3 regions as follows: Neimenggu Eerduosi, Shanxi Changzhi, Ningxia. In general, reducing the consumption of water and other raw materials like coal and electricity can reduce the blue water footprint of coal-based fuels; reducing the pollutant which has the largest influence factor and consumption of raw materials can reduce the grey water footprint. For the planning of developing coal-based fuels industry, the impact of water resource must be considered, including the consumption of water and the water pollution.