Review of impact categories and environmental indicators for life cycle assessment of geotechnical systems

Abstract Purpose California’s Central Valley produces more than 75% of global commercial almond supply, making the life cycle performance of almond production in California of global interest. This article describes the life cycle assessment of California almond production using a Scalable, Process-based, Agronomically Responsive Cropping System Life Cycle Assessment (SPARCS-LCA) model that includes crop responses to orchard management and modeling of California’s water supply and biomass energy infrastructure. Methods A spatially and temporally resolved LCA model was developed to reflect the regional climate, resource, and agronomic conditions across California’s Central Valley by hydrologic subregion (San Joaquin Valley, Sacramento Valley, and Tulare Lake regions). The model couples a LCA framework with region-specific data, including water supply infrastructure and economics, crop productivity response models, and dynamic co-product markets, to characterize the environmental performance of California almonds. Previous LCAs of California almond found that irrigation and management of co-products were most influential in determining life cycle CO2eq emissions and energy intensity of California almond production, and both have experienced extensive changes since previous studies due to drought and changing regulatory conditions, making them a focus of sensitivity and scenario analysis. Results and discussion Results using economic allocation show that 1 kg of hulled, brown-skin almond kernel at post-harvest facility gate causes 1.92 kg CO2eq (GWP100), 50.9 MJ energy use, and 4820 L freshwater use, with regional ranges of 2.0–2.69 kg CO2eq, 42.7–59.4 MJ, and 4540–5150 L, respectively. With a substitution approach for co-product allocation, 1 kg almond kernel results in 1.23 kg CO2eq, 18.05 MJ energy use, and 4804 L freshwater use, with regional ranges of 0.51–1.95 kg CO2eq, 3.68–36.5 MJ, and 4521–5140 L, respectively. Almond freshwater use is comparable with other nut crops in California and globally. Results showed significant variability across subregions. While the San Joaquin Valley performed best in most impact categories, the Tulare Lake region produced the lowest eutrophication impacts. Conclusion While CO2eq and energy intensity of almond production increased over previous estimates, so too did credits to the system for displacement of dairy feed. These changes result from a more comprehensive model scope and improved assumptions, as well as drought-related increases in groundwater depth and associated energy demand, and decreased utilization of biomass residues for energy recovery due to closure of bioenergy plants in California. The variation among different impact categories between subregions and over time highlight the need for spatially and temporally resolved agricultural LCA.

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Exploring sustainability potentials in vineyards through LCA? Evidence from farming practices in South Africa

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment ◽

10.1007/s11367-021-01911-3 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

V. Russo ◽

A. E. Strever ◽

H. J. Ponstein

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Human Health ◽

South African ◽

Wine Grape ◽

Impact Categories ◽

Farming Practices ◽

Manual Labour ◽

The Impact

Abstract Purpose Following the urgency to curb environmental impacts across all sectors globally, this is the first life cycle assessment of different wine grape farming practices suitable for commercial conventional production in South Africa, aiming at better understanding the potentials to reduce adverse effects on the environment and on human health. Methods An attributional life cycle assessment was conducted on eight different scenarios that reduce the inputs of herbicides and insecticides compared against a business as usual (BAU) scenario. We assess several impact categories based on ReCiPe, namely global warming potential, terrestrial acidification, freshwater eutrophication, terrestrial toxicity, freshwater toxicity, marine toxicity, human carcinogenic toxicity and human non-carcinogenic toxicity, human health and ecosystems. A water footprint assessment based on the AWARE method accounts for potential impacts within the watershed. Results and discussion Results show that in our impact assessment, more sustainable farming practices do not always outperform the BAU scenario, which relies on synthetic fertiliser and agrochemicals. As a main trend, most of the impact categories were dominated by energy requirements of wine grape production in an irrigated vineyard, namely the usage of electricity for irrigation pumps and diesel for agricultural machinery. The most favourable scenario across the impact categories provided a low diesel usage, strongly reduced herbicides and the absence of insecticides as it applied cover crops and an integrated pest management. Pesticides and heavy metals contained in agrochemicals are the main contributors to emissions to soil that affected the toxicity categories and impose a risk on human health, which is particularly relevant for the manual labour-intensive South African wine sector. However, we suggest that impacts of agrochemicals on human health and the environment are undervalued in the assessment. The 70% reduction of toxic agrochemicals such as Glyphosate and Paraquat and the 100% reduction of Chlorpyriphos in vineyards hardly affected the model results for human and ecotoxicity. Our concerns are magnified by the fact that manual labour plays a substantial role in South African vineyards, increasing the exposure of humans to these toxic chemicals at their workplace. Conclusions A more sustainable wine grape production is possible when shifting to integrated grape production practices that reduce the inputs of agrochemicals. Further, improved water and related electricity management through drip irrigation, deficit irrigation and photovoltaic-powered irrigation is recommendable, relieving stress on local water bodies, enhancing drought-preparedness planning and curbing CO2 emissions embodied in products.

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Analysis of the Characteristics of Environmental Impacts According to the Cut-Off Criteria Applicable to the Streamlined Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) of Apartment Buildings in South Korea

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13052898 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (5) ◽

pp. 2898

Author(s):

Rakhyun Kim ◽

Myung-Kwan Lim ◽

Seungjun Roh ◽

Won-Jun Park

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Environmental Impact ◽

Environmental Impacts ◽

Impact Analysis ◽

Impact Categories ◽

Environmental Impact Analysis ◽

Apartment Buildings ◽

Environmental Impact Categories ◽

Weight Percentile

This study analyzed the characteristics of the environmental impacts of apartment buildings, a typical housing type in South Korea, as part of a research project supporting the streamlined life cycle assessment (S-LCA) of buildings within the G-SEED (Green Standard for Energy and Environmental Design) framework. Three recently built apartment building complexes were chosen as study objects for the quantitative evaluation of the buildings in terms of their embodied environmental impacts (global warming potential, acidification potential, eutrophication potential, ozone layer depletion potential, photochemical oxidant creation potential, and abiotic depletion potential), using the LCA approach. Additionally, we analyzed the emission trends according to the cut-off criteria of the six environmental impact categories by performing an S-LCA with cut-off criteria 90–99% of the cumulative weight percentile. Consequently, we were able to present the cut-off criterion best suited for S-LCA and analyze the effect of the cut-off criteria on the environmental impact analysis results. A comprehensive environmental impact analysis of the characteristics of the six environmental impact categories revealed that the error rate was below 5% when the cut-off criterion of 97.5% of the cumulative weight percentile was applied, thus verifying its validity as the optimal cut-off criterion for S-LCA.

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Impact Categories through Life Cycle Assessment of Coal-fired Brick

Procedia Technology ◽

10.1016/j.protcy.2016.05.091 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 24 ◽

pp. 531-537 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

C.P. Sunil Kumar ◽

S. Parvathi ◽

R. Rudramoorthy

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Impact Categories

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Life Cycle Assessment of viticultural technical management routes (TMRs): comparison between an organic and an integrated management route

OENO One ◽

10.20870/oeno-one.2016.50.2.783 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 50 (2) ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Anthony Rouault ◽

Sandra Beauchet ◽

Christel Renaud-Gentie ◽

Frédérique Jourjon

Keyword(s):

Heavy Metal ◽

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Environmental Impacts ◽

Plant Protection ◽

Resource Depletion ◽

Impact Categories ◽

Nitrogen Emissions ◽

Technical Management ◽

Lca Results

Aims: Using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), this study aims to compare the environmental impacts of two different viticultural technical management routes (TMRs); integrated and organic) and to identify the operations that contribute the most to the impacts.Methods and results: LCA impact scores were expressed in two functional units: 1 ha of cultivated area and 1 kg of collected grape. We studied all operations from field preparation before planting to the end-of-life of the vine. Inputs and outputs were transformed into potential environmental impacts thanks to SALCA™ (V1.02) and USETox™ (V1.03) methods. Plant protection treatments were a major cause of impact for both TMRs for fuel-related impact categories. For both TMRs, the main contributors to natural resource depletion and freshwater ecotoxicity were trellis system installation and background heavy metal emissions, respectively.Conclusion: This study shows that the studied organic TMR has higher impact scores than the integrated TMR for all the chosen impact categories except eutrophication. However, the chosen TMRs are only typical of integrated and organic viticulture in Loire Valley and some emission models (heavy metal, fuel-related emissions, and nitrogen emissions) have to be improved in order to better assess the environmental impacts of viticulture. Soil quality should also be integrated to LCA results in viticulture because this lack may be a disadvantage for organic viticulture.Significance and impact of study: This study is among the first to compare LCA results of an integrated and an organic TMR.

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Life Cycle Assessment of Maize-Germ Oil Production and The Use of Bioenergy to Mitigate Environmental Impacts: A Gate-To-Gate Case Study

Resources ◽

10.3390/resources8020060 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 8 (2) ◽

pp. 60 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Mattias Gaglio ◽

Elena Tamburini ◽

Francesco Lucchesi ◽

Vassilis Aschonitis ◽

Anna Atti ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Environmental Impacts ◽

Energy Demand ◽

Food Industry ◽

Renewable Energy Sources ◽

Environmental Benefits ◽

Impact Categories ◽

Industrial Processing ◽

The Impact

The need to reduce the environmental impacts of the food industry is increasing together with the dramatic increment of global food demand. Circulation strategies such as the exploitation of self-produced renewable energy sources can improve ecological performances of industrial processes. However, evidence is needed to demonstrate and characterize such environmental benefits. This study assessed the environmental performances of industrial processing of maize edible oil, whose energy provision is guaranteed by residues biomasses. A gate-to-gate Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach was applied for a large-size factory of Northern Italy to describe: (i) the environmental impacts related to industrial processing and (ii) the contribution of residue-based bioenergy to their mitigation, through the comparison with a reference system based on conventional energy. The results showed that oil refinement is the most impacting phase for almost all the considered impact categories. The use of residue-based bioenergy was found to drastically reduce the emissions for all the impact categories. Moreover, Cumulative Energy Demand analysis revealed that the use of biomass residues increased energy efficiency through a reduction of the total energy demand of the industrial process. The study demonstrates that the exploitation of residue-based bioenergy can be a sustainable solution to improve environmental performances of the food industry, while supporting circular economy.

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Life Cycle Assessment of Tungsten Production in China

Materials Science Forum ◽

10.4028/www.scientific.net/msf.944.1137 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 944 ◽

pp. 1137-1143 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Ke Wei Lu ◽

Xian Zheng Gong ◽

Bo Xue Sun ◽

Qing Ding

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Environmental Impact ◽

Steel Industry ◽

Smelting Process ◽

Impact Categories ◽

Analysis Method ◽

Total Consumption ◽

Production Processes ◽

Annual Total

Tungsten is an important strategic metal, widely used in cemented carbide manufacturing, steel industry, and other economic fields. The amount of tungsten resource consumed in China each year accounts for more than 80% of the world’s annual total consumption. The purpose of this study is to quantify the environmental impact of tungsten production in China through the method of LCA. The result shows that, regarding the contributions of impact categories, the normalized value of HTP is the largest one among various impact categories, which accounts for 35.39% of the total environmental impact, followed by AP, PMFP, GWP, MDP, FDP, and POFP, respectively. The results also show that, regarding the contributions of production processes, smelting process is the largest contributor to the environmental burden of tungsten production due to the crystallization and calcination reduction occurred in the smelting process consumes a large amount of electricity, followed by mining, beneficiation, and transportation, respectively. The major academic contribution of this paper to the existing literatures is that we employed process-based analysis method, which could improve the accuracy of the study and provide practical advices for tungsten enterprises to reduce the environmental impact.

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Life cycle assessment of biomass production: Development of a methodology to improve the environmental indicators and testing with fiber sorghum energy crop

Biomass and Bioenergy ◽

10.1016/j.biombioe.2010.05.002 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 34 (10) ◽

pp. 1513-1522 ◽

Cited By ~ 28

Author(s):

Cinzia Buratti ◽

Francesco Fantozzi

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Biomass Production ◽

Environmental Indicators ◽

Energy Crop ◽

Production Development

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Sensitivity Analysis in the Life-Cycle Assessment of Electric vs. Combustion Engine Cars under Approximate Real-World Conditions

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su12031241 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (3) ◽

pp. 1241 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Eckard Helmers ◽

Johannes Dietz ◽

Martin Weiss

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Real World ◽

Emission Inventory ◽

Combustion Engine ◽

Climate Impacts ◽

Impact Categories ◽

Passenger Cars ◽

Electric Cars ◽

On The Road

This study compares the environmental impacts of petrol, diesel, natural gas, and electric vehicles using a process-based attributional life cycle assessment (LCA) and the ReCiPe characterization method that captures 18 impact categories and the single score endpoints. Unlike common practice, we derive the cradle-to-grave inventories from an originally combustion engine VW Caddy that was disassembled and electrified in our laboratory, and its energy consumption was measured on the road. Ecoivent 2.2 and 3.0 emission inventories were contrasted exhibiting basically insignificant impact deviations. Ecoinvent 3.0 emission inventory for the diesel car was additionally updated with recent real-world close emission values and revealed strong increases over four midpoint impact categories, when matched with the standard Ecoinvent 3.0 emission inventory. Producing batteries with photovoltaic electricity instead of Chinese coal-based electricity decreases climate impacts of battery production by 69%. Break-even mileages for the electric VW Caddy to pass the combustion engine models under various conditions in terms of climate change impact ranged from 17,000 to 310,000 km. Break-even mileages, when contrasting the VW Caddy and a mini car (SMART), which was as well electrified, did not show systematic differences. Also, CO2-eq emissions in terms of passenger kilometers travelled (54–158 g CO2-eq/PKT) are fairly similar based on 1 person travelling in the mini car and 1.57 persons in the mid-sized car (VW Caddy). Additionally, under optimized conditions (battery production and use phase utilizing renewable electricity), the two electric cars can compete well in terms of CO2-eq emissions per passenger kilometer with other traffic modes (diesel bus, coach, trains) over lifetime. Only electric buses were found to have lower life cycle carbon emissions (27–52 g CO2-eq/PKT) than the two electric passenger cars.

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Process simulation and gate-to-gate life cycle assessment of hydrometallurgical refractory gold concentrate processing

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment ◽

10.1007/s11367-019-01723-6 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 25 (3) ◽

pp. 456-477 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Heini Elomaa ◽

Pia Sinisalo ◽

Lotta Rintala ◽

Jari Aromaa ◽

Mari Lundström

Keyword(s):

Global Warming ◽

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Environmental Impacts ◽

Process Simulation ◽

Development Stage ◽

Environmental Indicators ◽

Gold Recovery ◽

Pressure Oxidation ◽

Refractory Gold

Abstract Purpose Currently, almost all cyanide-free gold leaching processes are still in the development stage. Proactively investigating their environmental impacts prior to commercialization is of utmost importance. In this study, a detailed refractory gold concentrate process simulation with mass and energy balance was built for state-of-the-art technology with (i) pressure oxidation followed by cyanidation and, compared to alternative cyanide-free technology, with (ii) pressure oxidation followed by halogen leaching. Subsequently, the simulated mass balance was used as life cycle inventory data in order to evaluate the environmental impacts of the predominant cyanidation process and a cyanide-free alternative. Methods The environmental indicators for each scenario are based on the mass balance produced with HSC Sim steady-state simulation. The simulated mass balances were evaluated to identify the challenges in used technologies. The HSC Sim software is compatible with the GaBi LCA software, where LCI data from HSC-Sim is directly exported to. The simulation produces a consistent life cycle inventory (LCI). In GaBi LCA software, the environmental indicators of global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential (AP), terrestrial eutrophication potential (EP), and water depletion (Water) are estimated. Results and discussion The life cycle assessment revealed that the GWP for cyanidation was 10.1 t CO2-e/kg Au, whereas the halogen process indicated a slightly higher GWP of 12.6 t CO2-e/kg Au. The difference is partially explained by the fact that the footprint is calculated against produced units of Au; total recovery by the halogen leaching route for gold was only 87.3%, whereas the cyanidation route could extract as much as 98.5% of gold. The addition of a second gold recovery unit to extract gold also from the washing water in the halogen process increased gold recovery up to 98.5%, decreasing the GWP of the halogen process to 11.5 t CO2-e/kg Au. However, both evaluated halogen processing scenarios indicated a slightly higher global warming potential when compared to the dominating cyanidation technology. Conclusions The estimated environmental impacts predict that the development-stage cyanide-free process still has some challenges compared to cyanidation; as in the investigated scenarios, the environmental impacts were generally higher for halogen leaching. Further process improvements, for example in the form of decreased moisture in the feed for halide leaching, and the adaptation of in situ gold recovery practices in chloride leaching may give the cyanide-free processing options a competitive edge.

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