Citation:

Li, S., Y. Feliachi, S. Agbleze, G. Ruiz-Mercado, R. Smith, D. Meyer, M. Gonzalez, AND F. Lima. A process systems framework for rapid generation of life cycle inventories for pollution control and sustainability evaluation. CLEAN TECHNOLOGIES AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY. Springer-Verlag, New York, NY, 20(7):1543-1561, (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-018-1530-6

Impact/Purpose:

The rapid inventory methodology, enhanced by the developed pollution control unit and abatement technology models, will enable the Life Cycle Human Exposure Modeling method, and more generally life cycle assessment (LCA) to be applied to a broad range of Agency decision needs, including chemical screening and prioritization and chemical alternatives design and assessment. Thus, when combined with other methods in CSS to estimate chemical emissions from consumer product use, a user will be able to generate a complete life cycle inventory (LCI) with minimal expenditure of time and resources for most chemicals in consumer products. This integration will be a key part of the final output of the LCHEM Project, the Life Cycle Consumer Product Analyzer. This tool, developed with rapid LCI methods, will support the ability of Regional and Program Office partners to include LCA, and more specifically the LCHEM methodology, as part of the decision process to better address the Agency's sustainability goals. This will enhance chemical management decisions where it is necessary or desirable to consider a chemical's potential impact on health and safety, resource conservation, clean air, clean water, and sustainable materials management. Given the similar data needs between LCA and life cycle risk assessment, the methods developed here can also support risk assessment activities where data describing far field (or facility) chemical emissions are needed.

Description:

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool that aids in sustainable decision-making among product and process alternatives. When implementing LCA, the efficient and accurate modeling of chemical processes for life cycle inventory (LCI) generation is still challenging. Challenges include a lack of systematic design and simulation tools and approaches to develop chemical process models for obtaining and analyzing more realistic LCI results. In this contribution, a novel process systems framework is proposed for estimating LCI results when implementing pollution control technologies. This framework involves the development and incorporation of pollution control unit (PCU) modules into process simulation and generation of LCI data associated with the PCUs for use in a sustainability evaluation. Different pollution control modules are designed for rapid LCI estimation and applied to obtain emissions, utility consumption, material, and land footprint results related to waste streams of a process simulation. Then, the LCI results are analyzed with the objectives of minimizing the environmental impact and utility consumption. The proposed framework is illustrated via a biomass/coal gasification process for syngas production with the end goal of acetic acid manufacturing. Results associated with this case study show that the developed framework can provide guidelines for sustainable decision-making based on generated LCI results.

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