Ecologically-based Life Cycle Assessment Research Articles

Value Chain Analysis of Palm Oil Biodiesel through a Hybrid (ISO-Eco) Life Cycle Assessment Approach

<p class="TTPParagraph1st">This study assesses the life-cycle impacts of palm oil biodiesel value chain in order to provide insights toward holistic sustainability awareness on the current development of bio-based energy policy. The assessment methodology was performed under a hybrid approach combining ISO-14040 Life Cycle Assessment (ISO-LCA) technique and Ecologically-based Life Cycle Assessment (Eco-LCA) methodology. The scope of this study covers all stages in palm oil biodiesel value chain or is often referred to as “cradle-to-grave” analysis. The functional unit to which all inputs and outputs were calculated is the production of 1 ton of biodiesel. For the analysis, life cycle inventory data were collected from professional databases and from scholarly articles addressing global palm oil supply chains. The inventory analysis yields a linked flow associating the land used, fresh fruit bunch (FFB), crude palm oil (CPO), per functional unit of 1 kg of palm oil biodiesel (POB). The linked flow obtained in the inventory analysis were then normalized and characterized following the characterization model formulated inISO-LCA guidelines. The aggregation of ecological inputs was classified based on the mass and energy associated to each unit process in the value chain, which are cultivation, extraction, conversion, and utilization. It is noted that compared to other unit processes, cultivation is the most crucial unit process within the whole palm oil biodiesel value chain. This study serves as a big picture about the current state of palm oil biodiesel value chain, which will be beneficial for further improving oversight of the policy making and service toward sustainable development.</p><p class="TTPKeywords"><strong><span> </span></strong></p>

Value Chain Analysis of Palm Oil Biodiesel through a Hybrid (ISO-Eco) Life Cycle Assessment Approach

<p class="TTPParagraph1st">This study assesses the life-cycle impacts of palm oil biodiesel value chain in order to provide insights toward holistic sustainability awareness on the current development of bio-based energy policy. The assessment methodology was performed under a hybrid approach combining ISO-14040 Life Cycle Assessment (ISO-LCA) technique and Ecologically-based Life Cycle Assessment (Eco-LCA) methodology. The scope of this study covers all stages in palm oil biodiesel value chain or is often referred to as “cradle-to-grave” analysis. The functional unit to which all inputs and outputs were calculated is the production of 1 ton of biodiesel. For the analysis, life cycle inventory data were collected from professional databases and from scholarly articles addressing global palm oil supply chains. The inventory analysis yields a linked flow associating the land used, fresh fruit bunch (FFB), crude palm oil (CPO), per functional unit of 1 kg of palm oil biodiesel (POB). The linked flow obtained in the inventory analysis were then normalized and characterized following the characterization model formulated inISO-LCA guidelines. The aggregation of ecological inputs was classified based on the mass and energy associated to each unit process in the value chain, which are cultivation, extraction, conversion, and utilization. It is noted that compared to other unit processes, cultivation is the most crucial unit process within the whole palm oil biodiesel value chain. This study serves as a big picture about the current state of palm oil biodiesel value chain, which will be beneficial for further improving oversight of the policy making and service toward sustainable development.</p><p class="TTPKeywords"><strong><span> </span></strong></p>

Complementary life cycle assessment of wastewater treatment plants: An integrated approach to comprehensive upstream and downstream impact assessments and its extension to building-level wastewater generation

Typical life cycle assessment (LCA) studies of Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTP) too often focus exclusively on either upstream or downstream impacts while failing to connect this to a scale appropriate for integration in building assessments. A solution to this problem would offer a framework of tools to map the full scope of WWTP impacts, both upstream and downstream, in an integrated manner yet can be valid on an individual building level. This will allow for the capture of an aspect of the building use phase that is often neglected in the assessment process. The integrated approach discussed in this paper is unique in that it uses existing LCA methods to evaluate upstream and downstream impacts in a novel and complementary fashion. Upstream impacts are determined using three methods, namely: Economic Input–Output LCA (EIO-LCA), Ecologically-based LCA (Eco-LCA), and emergy analysis. Downstream impacts are captured through the application of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency calculations and a process-based method for land application of sludge waste products. Furthermore, this paper discusses the results that were extended to assess wastewater impacts on the scale of a specific building to complete the impact assessment from a previous study by the authors (Srinivasan et al. (2014). Building and Environment, 79, 151). The goal of this work is to develop a method to account for the upstream and downstream life cycle impacts of wastewater treatment at the plant and individual building level.

Emergy and end-point impact assessment of agricultural and food production in the United States: A supply chain-linked Ecologically-based Life Cycle Assessment

The concept of tracing the ecologically-based life cycle impacts of agricultural and food industries (AFIs) has become a topic of interest worldwide due to their critical association with the climate change, water and land footprint, and food security. In this study, an in-depth analysis of ecological resource consumption, atmospheric emissions, land and water footprints of 54 agricultural and food industries in the U.S. were examined extensively. Initially, the supply-chain linked ecological life cycle assessment was performed with Ecologically-based Life Cycle Assessment (Eco-LCA) tool. Then, the results of life cycle inventory were used to assess the mid and end-point impacts by using the ReCiPe approach. Thirdly, ecological performance assessment was performed using well-known metrics, including loading and renewability ratios and eco-efficiency analysis. As a novel comprehensive approach, the integrated framework that consists of the Eco-LCA, ReCiPe and linear programming-based ecological performance assessment is of importance to have an overall understanding about the extent of impacts related to agricultural and food production activities across the U.S. Results indicated that grain farming, dairy food, and animal production-related sectors were found to have the greatest shares in both environmental and ecological impact categories as well as endpoint impacts on human health, ecosystem and resources. In terms of climate change, animal (except poultry) slaughtering, rendering, and processing (ASRP), cattle ranching and farming (CRF), fertilizer manufacturing (FM), grain farming (GF), fluid milk and butter manufacturing (FMBM) were found to be the top five dominant industries in climate change impacts accounting for about 60% share of the total impact.

Supply chain-linked sustainability assessment of the US manufacturing: An ecosystem perspective

This paper addresses the ecological resource consumption extents of the US manufacturing industries with a specific focus on renewable and non-renewable resource indicators from the national economic viewpoint. A hierarchical methodology was employed to quantify renewable and non-renewable resource life cycle inventory associated with the nation’s manufacturing sectors and to evaluate the ecological sustainability performance. Therefore, first, ecological life cycle inventory of renewable and non-renewable resource consumption of 53 national manufacturing sectors was quantified with the ecologically-based life cycle assessment framework, and then, ecological sustainability performance assessment was performed based on well-known metrics such as loading ratio (LR), renewability ratio (RR) and non-renewable based eco-efficiency (NREE). Results indicated that nonferrous metal and nonmetallic mineral product manufacturing sectors were the drivers of non-renewable resource consumption, which caused these industries, have the least nonrenewable eco-efficiency (NREE) scores, renewability ratios (RRs) and the highest environmental loading ratios (LRs). Ecological life cycle inventory results indicated that nonferrous metal production and processing non-renewable resource consumption shares ranged between 46% and 55% in the entire supply chain network. Additionally, nonmetallic mineral product manufacturing had usage share of various non-renewable resources between 23% and 74% of the supply chains’ total usage. Besides, food, tobacco and apparel manufacturing were found to have the highest RRs where the average NREE was found to be 0.4. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis of non-renewable resource indicators to NREE scores indicated that the average sensitivity ratios ranged between 5.1% and 22.4%, where ‘Talc and pyrophyllite’ was found to have the highest sensitivity.

工业过程生态生命周期评价的生态累积(火用)耗模型

As an extension of traditional life cycle assessment, ecologically based life cycle assessment (Eco-LCA) provides an appealing approach to recognize the impacts and sustainability of the process industries from an ecological scale. However, a comprehensive model of ecological cumulative exergy consumption (ECEC) for Eco-LCA of industrial processes is still not available. In this paper, the quantification of ECEC is discussed. Three influencing factors of industrial processes including natural capital, social capital and environmental impact are addressed and studied here. An ECEC model integrating resources, economic and environmental elements is established. It aims to improve the Eco-LCA methodology as applied for sustainability analysis of the process industries. An illustrative example of Chinese crude oil production provides insight into the features of the proposed model.

Revision and Extension of Eco-LCA Metrics for Sustainability Assessment of the Energy and Chemical Processes

Ecologically based life cycle assessment (Eco-LCA) is an appealing approach for the evaluation of resources utilization and environmental impacts of the process industries from an ecological scale. However, the aggregated metrics of Eco-LCA suffer from some drawbacks: the environmental impact metric has limited applicability; the resource utilization metric ignores indirect consumption; the renewability metric fails to address the quantitative distinction of resources availability; the productivity metric seems self-contradictory. In this paper, the existing Eco-LCA metrics are revised and extended for sustainability assessment of the energy and chemical processes. A new Eco-LCA metrics system is proposed, including four independent dimensions: environmental impact, resource utilization, resource availability, and economic effectiveness. An illustrative example of comparing assessment between a gas boiler and a solar boiler process provides insight into the features of the proposed approach.

1,3-Propanediol from Fossils versus Biomass: A Life Cycle Evaluation of Emissions and Ecological Resources

Despite the popularity of life cycle assessment (LCA) for understanding the broader implications of technological alternatives, it faces challenges due to difficulties in defining the analysis boundary, uncertain data, and ignoring the role of ecological goods and services. The latter natural capital is essential for sustainability but is only considered partially in conventional LCA. Accounting for ecological resources introduces the challenge of how to aggregate resources of widely varying qualities such as sunlight, wood, water, and coal. Methods based on mass, energy, and exergy have been proposed and are evaluated in this work. In addition, this work aims to analyze three LCA techniques with different system boundaries: conventional process-based LCA, hybrid economic input−output LCA (EIO-LCA), and hybrid ecologically based LCA (Eco-LCA). These three methods are applied to the case study of 1,3-propanediol (PDO) produced via fossil-based and bio-based feedstocks. The results of this study indicate that a hierarchical set of metrics can be useful for gaining insight into the role of ecosystem resources in a life cycle. Among aggregation methods, ecological cumulative exergy consumption seems to provide meaningful results, but more empirical studies are needed. It is also determined that bio-based PDO is more attractive than fossil-based PDO because of less nonrenewable resource consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. However, bio-based PDO does rely more on land, water, and fertile soil. By determining the impact of making the current PDO demand entirely from corn, it is found that the consumption of natural resources relative to national consumption is very low. While producing PDO alone from corn may have a negligible impact in terms of emissions and resource use, switching other products to bio-based will have an additive effect, increasing the strain on some ecological goods and services. These impacts should be addressed before promoting the large scale production of bio-based products.

Resource intensities of chemical industry sectors in the United States via input–output network models

Transitioning to more sustainable operations is widely considered to be among the premier challenges facing the chemical industry today. The motivators for such change include an increasingly tightening regulatory regime, increased consumer awareness, and inclination of investors to consider risks associated with lendings to hazardous material industries. As an effort to become “greener”, chemical industries are making conscious efforts to reduce their resource intensities or footprints. Such efforts need to be supported by models that can quantify the broad economic and environmental implications of industrial decisions. This manuscript uses the recently developed Ecologically Based Life Cycle Assessment (EcoLCA) model of the United States economy to analyze resource intensities of chemical industry sectors, comparing them with each other and with other industry sectors. The raw numbers are normalized by national flows to gain insight into possible resource vulnerabilities of industrial sectors. These numbers are also aggregated based on their mass or exergy to reduce their dimensionality and permit easier interpretation. Ecological cumulative exergy consumption (ECEC) allows consideration of a wide variety of ecosystem goods and services, human resources and emissions and their impacts on a consistent basis, and is shown to provide unique insight in addition to conventional measures based on mass and Industrial cumulative exergy consumption (ICEC). Ratios of ECEC to money indicate the relative throughputs of natural to economic capital, and are used for investigating supply chains of selected sectors and identifying likely keystone sectors. The insights obtained by juxtaposing resource intensities of chemical industry sectors amongst themselves and with those of the rest of economy are used to identify opportunities for reducing resources intensities of chemical industry sectors that could enable improvement of their environmental sustainability.