A process-oriented life-cycle assessment (LCA) model for environmental and resource-related technologies (EASETECH)

Abstract

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Energy Sustainability with a Focus on Environmental Perspectives

“…Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an effective methodology for analyses (Graedel and Allenby 2010 ). LCA has been applied extensively to a broad range of activities (Ben-Alon et al 2019 ; Lodato et al 2020 ; Lu and Halog 2020 ), including energy processes (Sadeghi et al 2020 ; Mendecka et al 2020 ) and communities (Karunathilake et al 2019 ).…”

Organic waste biorefineries: Looking towards implementation

“…While the feedstock composition and properties can be considered fundamental for the environmental performance of waste biorefineries (Bisinella et al, 2017), also the configuration and performance of individual unit-processes are critical. Recently, Lodato et al (2020) developed an LCA approach specifically targeted towards integrated technologies such as (waste) biorefineries, thereby demonstrating that process efficiencies and mass, energy, and substance flows within a biorefinery have profound importance for the overall environmental performance. This includes the composition of side streams, rejects and co-products from the biorefinery (e.g.…”

Process-oriented life cycle assessment modelling in EASETECH

“…However, LCAs of specific technologies typically build on available studies for similar technologies and processes, and then adapt these existing models to suit the concrete case-study. This means that technology data, performance assumptions and parameters may not appropriately represent the new technology in question (Henriksen et al, 2018), which results not only in loss of information, but also the need for a more process-oriented LCA modelling approach for individual technologies and technology systems with input-output relationshipsas suggested by Lodato et al (2020). Such relationships can be linear or non-linear (e.g.…”

“…On this basis, we implement the process-oriented modelling principles from Lodato et al (2020) within LCA modelling of waste management technologies, thereby expanding the capabilities of the existing EASETECH model. This is done with focus on four key modelling features: i) mixing and/or redefining physical flows; ii) substance recirculation within physical flows; iii) links between physical flows from background processes and foreground processes and iv) (multi)conditional sequence flows.…”