Food Waste Valorization to Green Energy Vehicles: Sustainability Assessment

Increases in food waste (FW) and green vehicle (GV) due to population growth and social advancement can hinder realizing a sustainable society. This study propose a systematic sustainable feasibility assessment that concentrated on energetic, economic, and environmental aspects based decision-making framework to identify the best strategy of food waste and transportaion management. This study compared four types of GV operations using green fuel from FW: internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEV) using biomethane, ICEV using bioethanol, fuel cell vehicles (FCV) using biohydrogen, and plug-in electric vehicles using bioelectricity. The impact of FW processing combined with operating GV focusing on the four countries, namely, China, India, USA, and Brazil, having the highest FW generation and vehicle population was analyzed for the near future. The FCV operation is the most sustainably-feasible regarding high potential driving distance (220–254 miles per tonne of FW), low economic cost potential (0.09–0.10 USD per mile) and high greenhouse gas reduction potential (3.0–4.8 kg CO2 per mile). The 7.24 million FCVs can be operated using 20% (0.38 Gt) of FW generated in the four countries by 2030, resulting in 12.2% decrease in GHG emissions (0.05 Gt) and 18.6% energy use (0.10 EJ).