Sudan'daki Bir Rafineride Kullanılan İki Farklı Ham Petrol Türünün Karşılaştırmalı Yaşam Döngüsü Değerlendirmesi

Abstract

Climate change, caused primarily by fossil fuels used for meeting the increasing energy demand, has become a global concern since the last decade. One of the most important sectors contributing to this demand is transport fuel production. Oil refining is the hotspot for life cycle environmental burdens of all transport fuel types. To respond to this global challenge, all parties need to work in an identical pattern, i.e., socially appropriate, technically feasible, economically sustainable, and environmentally friendly. Specifically, the oil refining industry uses vast amounts of raw materials and creates considerable waste that needs to be processed, mainly at refinery sites. In this study, we compare two different types of crude oil used in Sudan refineries, namely X and Y blend crude oil, in terms of environmental impacts. A detailed Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) defined by the ISO14040/14044 frameworks carried out via SimaPro software v.8.1.1.16. Both midpoint and endpoint approaches were adopted for the ReCiPe impact assessment method. Based on the selected midpoint impact categories, i.e., climate change, ozone depletion, human toxicity, and terrestrial acidification, the X crude oil impact scores were 282.7 kg CO2 eq, 2.45E-06 kg CFC-11 eq, 1.05 kg 1,4-DB eq, and 0.145 kg SO2 eq while the Y crude oil scores were 265.9 kg CO2 eq, 1.58E-06 kg CFC-11 eq, 0.735 kg 1,4-DB eq, and 0.095 kg SO2 eq, respectively. From an endpoint approach considering the representative single scores, overall impacts for the X and Y crude oil created an environmental load output of 13.8 and 12.7 Pt, respectively. As expected, both types of crude oil had a direct impact on the environment, where crude oil Y was found to have 10% less impact than crude oil X.