Τhe strategic role of Life Cycle Assessment in the problem of material criticality and in development of Chromium-free substitute for stainless steel

Sustainable and on-going technological developments in the field of materials require the establishment of methods and tools for assessing, comparing environmental impacts and providing solutions to the problem of “resource criticality” by identifying a policy of an economic and ecological plan. Therefore, there is a clear need for prevention and provision of additional knowledge beyond the defined protocols to achieve the reduction of impacts. For this reason, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been developed as a scientific technique that systematically assesses and evaluates the environmental impacts associated with all stages of a product's life. In this work, LCA was applied in a part of a highly innovative process of production of advanced Iron-Aluminum (Fe-Al) based intermetallics. LCA role is particularly crucial, since the produced intermetallics are bound to substitute stainless steel, in specific applications, providing solution in the problem of Cr and Ni; as a result, the environmental burdens and impacts, as well as application of alternative solutions to minimize them, will decide if such an innovative, from the technical point of view, approach is also applicable/sustainable in large scale.

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Life Cycle Assessment and Environmental Valuation of Biochar Production: Two Case Studies in Belgium

Energies ◽

10.3390/en12112166 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 12 (11) ◽

pp. 2166 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Sara Rajabi Hamedani ◽

Tom Kuppens ◽

Robert Malina ◽

Enrico Bocci ◽

Andrea Colantoni ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Environmental Impacts ◽

Production Systems ◽

Point Of View ◽

Environmental Benefits ◽

Pig Manure ◽

Future Research ◽

Life Cycle Perspective ◽

The Impact

It is unclear whether the production of biochar is economically feasible. As a consequence, firms do not often invest in biochar production plants. However, biochar production and application might be desirable from a societal perspective as it might entail net environmental benefits. Hence, the aim of this work has been to assess and monetize the environmental impacts of biochar production systems so that the environmental aspects can be integrated with the economic and social ones later on to quantify the total return for society. Therefore, a life cycle analysis (LCA) has been performed for two potential biochar production systems in Belgium based on two different feedstocks: (i) willow and (ii) pig manure. First, the environmental impacts of the two biochar production systems are assessed from a life cycle perspective, assuming one ton of biochar as the functional unit. Therefore, LCA using SimaPro software has been performed both on the midpoint and endpoint level. Biochar production from willow achieves better results compared to biochar from pig manure for all environmental impact categories considered. In a second step, monetary valuation has been applied to the LCA results in order to weigh environmental benefits against environmental costs using the Ecotax, Ecovalue, and Stepwise approach. Consequently, sensitivity analysis investigates the impact of variation in NPK savings and byproducts of the biochar production process on monetized life cycle assessment results. As a result, it is suggested that biochar production from willow is preferred to biochar production from pig manure from an environmental point of view. In future research, those monetized environmental impacts will be integrated within existing techno-economic models that calculate the financial viability from an investor’s point of view, so that the total return for society can be quantified and the preferred biochar production system from a societal point of view can be identified.

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Environmental impacts evaluation of electricity grid mix systems in four selected countries using a life cycle assessment point of view

2003 IEEE 58th Vehicular Technology Conference. VTC 2003-Fall (IEEE Cat. No.03CH37484) ◽

10.1109/vetecf.2003.240137 ◽

2003 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

A. Widiyanto ◽

S. Kato ◽

N. Maruyama ◽

A. Nishimura ◽

S. Sampattagul

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Environmental Impacts ◽

Point Of View ◽

Electricity Grid

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Environmental impacts evaluation of electricity grid mix systems in four selected countries using a life cycle assessment point of view

10.1109/ecodim.2003.1322633 ◽

2003 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Widiyanto ◽

Kato ◽

Maruyama ◽

Nishimura ◽

Sampattagul

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Environmental Impacts ◽

Point Of View ◽

Electricity Grid

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How (Carbon) Negative Is Direct Air Capture? Life Cycle Assessment of an Industrial Temperature-Vacuum Swing Adsorption Process

10.26434/chemrxiv.12833747 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Sarah Deutz ◽

André Bardow

Keyword(s):

Energy Source ◽

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Environmental Impacts ◽

Large Scale ◽

Low Carbon ◽

Direct Air Capture ◽

Trade Offs ◽

Negative Emissions ◽

Air Capture

Current climate targets require negative emissions. Direct air capture (DAC) is a promising negative emission technology, but energy and materials demands lead to trade-offs with indirect emissions and other environmental impacts. Here, we show by Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) that the first commercial DAC plants in Hinwil and Hellisheiði can achieve negative emissions already today with carbon capture efficiencies of 85.4 % and 93.1 %. Climate benefits of DAC, however, depend strongly on the energy source. When using low-carbon energy, as in Hellisheiði, adsorbent choice and plant construction become important with up to 45 and 15 gCO2e per kg CO2 captured, respectively. Large-scale deployment of DAC for 1 % of the global annual CO2 emissions would not be limited by material and energy availability. Other environmental impacts would increase by less than 0.057 %. Energy source and efficiency are essential for DAC to enable both negative emissions and low-carbon fuels.

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The Role of Environmental Evaluation within Circular Economy: An Application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Method in the Detergents Sector

Environmental and Climate Technologies ◽

10.2478/rtuect-2019-0066 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 23 (2) ◽

pp. 238-257

Author(s):

Maria G. Lucchetti ◽

Luisa Paolotti ◽

Lucia Rocchi ◽

Antonio Boggia

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Production Process ◽

Environmental Impacts ◽

Vegetable Oils ◽

Circular Economy ◽

Coconut Oil ◽

Environmental Evaluation

Abstract The present work aims to analyse the environmental advantages of a production process that applies circular economy. The study examines a product that is generated through the use of a certain percentage of recovered secondary materials, thus helping to avoid impacts related to the disposal of these materials and preserving the ecosystems from indiscriminate excessive natural resources extraction. The product analysed is an ecological detergent (“Ri-Detersivo” – Re-Detergent), produced by the company Tea Natura, mainly composed of regenerated vegetable oils coming from food industry. The methodology used in this paper is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). A partial LCA will be carried out here, arriving at the saponification phase, and comparing the environmental impacts deriving from the Re-Detergent production process with those of a traditional soap, comparable to that studied in terms of function. The analysis of the case study found that the use of regenerated vegetable oils for the production of soap allows to significantly reduce the environmental impacts compared to the use of coconut oil imported from third countries.

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How (Carbon) Negative Is Direct Air Capture? Life Cycle Assessment of an Industrial Temperature-Vacuum Swing Adsorption Process

10.26434/chemrxiv.12833747.v1 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Sarah Deutz ◽

André Bardow

Keyword(s):

Energy Source ◽

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Environmental Impacts ◽

Large Scale ◽

Low Carbon ◽

Direct Air Capture ◽

Trade Offs ◽

Negative Emissions ◽

Air Capture

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Prospective Life Cycle Assessment Based on System Dynamics Approach: A Case Study on the Large-Scale Centrifugal Compressor

Journal of Manufacturing Science and Engineering ◽

10.1115/1.4041950 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 141 (2) ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Shitong Peng ◽

Tao Li ◽

Yue Wang ◽

Zhichao Liu ◽

George Z. Tan ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

System Dynamics ◽

Environmental Impacts ◽

Centrifugal Compressor ◽

Environmental Assessment ◽

Large Scale ◽

Energy Structure ◽

Time Varying ◽

The Future

The deficiency of temporal information in life cycle assessment (LCA) may misrepresent the environmental impacts of products throughout the life cycle or at a particular time in the future. For the environmental assessment of energy-consuming products, background data obtained from the LCA database fail to incorporate emissions or extractions reflecting the future situation. To overcome this knowledge gap, we developed a system dynamics (SD) model to predict the evolution of energy structure in China till 2030 and further determined the time-varying emissions of unit electric power combined with the ecoinvent 3.1 database. Additionally, dynamic characterization factors (CFs) of global warming potential (GWP) were integrated into the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). This study took the PCL803 large-scale centrifugal compressor as an illustrative example in which the temporal-dependent electricity was included in the dynamic life cycle inventory and the dynamic CFs of GWP were included in the LCIA. Environmental impacts were quantified and compared using the traditional and prospective LCA. Results indicated that the environmental burdens under the electricity variation were approximately 13% less than those of conventional LCA, and the GWP under dynamic CFs would be further reduced by 14.5%. The results confirmed that, when socio-economic progress, technical improvement, and dynamic CFs are not considered, the environmental assessment will lead to an overestimation of environmental loads. Therefore, the relevant time-varying parameters should be considered for accurate assessment.

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Renewable Energy for Environmental Protection: Comparative Life Cycle Assessment of different Palm Oil Mills in Nigeria

10.31219/osf.io/x2fw9 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Kelechi E Anyaoha ◽

Lulu Zhang

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Environmental Impacts ◽

Palm Oil ◽

Oil Palm ◽

Large Scale ◽

Palm Kernel ◽

Sub Saharan Africa ◽

Oil Palm Industry

Oil palm is expected to continue its dominance of global oil production, trade, and consumption. Nigeria will continue to play a dominate role in oil palm industry particularly on production and consumption. One of the biggest challenges to agricultural productivities is the need to reduce the environmental impacts and improves circularity in the operations. This study investigated the environmental impacts of different palm oil processors in Nigeria using life cycle assessment approach. The study covers the reception and processing of fresh fruit bunch (FFB) to palm oil. The inputs include generated empty fruit bunch, mesocarp fibre, palm kernel shell, palm oil mill effluent, diesel, and water and all outputs to the environment for a functional unit of 1 tonne of FFB. The large-scale processor performs worse than the semi-mechanised and smallholder processors in terms of climate change with 468 kg CO2-eq per tonne of FFB and better in the other impact categories. In large-scale mill, the contribution to climate change was reduced by 75% when the raw POME was used in composting EFB. Similarly, the contribution to climate change was decreased by 44% when biogas from POME substituted diesel in the semi-mechanised and smallholder mills. Concerted efforts by regulators are needed to ensure that stakeholders take steps towards improving management practices in the industry. Particularly on the generation and reuse of biomass and POME. This study will be very useful particularly on the contributions to climate change by Nigeria’s oil palm industry and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

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