Ex-ante LCA of Emerging Technologies

Cucurachi, Stefano; Giesen, Coen van der; Guinée, Jeroen B.

doi:10.1016/j.procir.2017.11.005

Cited by 233 publications

(186 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…In the field now known as "sustainability science", there are already some well-established and recognized methods to assess possible effects of products and services, for example, Life Cycle Thinking, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and sustainability assessment (Clift & Druckman, 2016;Cucurachi et al, 2018;Guinée et al, 2018;ISO 14040, 2006;ISO 14044, 2018;Jolliet et al, 2016;JRC-IES, 2010;UNEP-SETAC, 2011). However, sustainability assessment for a technology in the early stages of its development is still difficult due to often limited information on the complete physical Integrated Innovation and Sustainability Analysis for New Technologies: An approach for collaborative R&D projects Johannes Gasde, Philipp Preiss, Claus Lang-Koetz classifying them in an influence/interest portfolio (Künkel et al, 2016).…”

Section: Result: a Methods -Integrated Innovation And Sustainability Amentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrated Innovation and Sustainability Analysis for New Technologies: An approach for collaborative R&D projects

Gasde¹,

Preiß²,

Lang‐Koetz³

2020

TIM Review

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Section: Result: a Methods -Integrated Innovation And Sustainability Amentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrated Innovation and Sustainability Analysis for New Technologies: An approach for collaborative R&D projects

Gasde¹,

Preiß²,

Lang‐Koetz³

2020

TIM Review

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“…LCA is one of the standard methods to evaluate the environmental impacts associated with product or service systems. Traditionally, LCA has been applied to existing and established product systems, with the consequence that results have always had a limited impact on decision‐making, due to the cost of implementing needed changes, for example, in established manufacturing processes (Cucurachi, van der Giesen, & Guinée, ). Ex‐ante LCA is regarded as the application of LCA on a novel product system before its full commercial deployment.…”

Section: Methods and Setup Of The Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Life cycle assessment of 3D printing geo‐polymer concrete: An ex‐ante study

Yao

Maio

et al. 2019

J of Industrial Ecology

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Three‐dimensional (3D) printing and geo‐polymers are two environmentally oriented innovations in concrete manufacturing. The 3D printing of concrete components aims to reduce raw material consumption and waste generation. Geo‐polymer is being developed to replace ordinary Portland cement and reduce the carbon footprint of the binder in the concrete. The environmental performance of the combined use of the two innovations is evaluated through an ex‐ante life cycle assessment (LCA). First, an attributional LCA was implemented, using data collected from the manufacturer to identify the hotspots for environmental improvements. Then, scaled‐up scenarios were built in collaboration with the company stakeholder. These scenarios were compared with the existing production system to understand the potential advantages/disadvantages of the innovative system and to identify the potential directions for improvement. The results indicate that 3D printing can potentially lead to waste reduction. However, depending on its recipe, geo‐polymer likely has higher environmental impacts than ordinary concrete. The ex‐ante LCA suggests that after step‐by‐step improvements in the production and transportation of raw materials, 3D printing geo‐polymer concrete is able to reduce the carbon footprint of concrete components, while it does still perform worse on impact categories, such as depletion of abiotic resources and stratospheric ozone depletion. We found that the most effective way to lower the environmental impacts of 3D concrete is to reduce silicate in the recipe of the geo‐polymer. This approach is, however, challenging to realize by the company due to the locked‐in effect of the previous innovation investment. The case study shows that to support technological innovation ex‐ante LCA has to be implemented as early as possible in innovation to allow for maintaining technical flexibility and improving on the identified hotspots.

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“…No evaluation of the consequences of the scale‐up of this technology has been published yet, and more generally, only few LCA studies have been published in literature on pilot scale productions . To this end, the present study fills this gap by evaluating the effect of the scale‐up of the CF synthesis of Rufinamide on environmental impacts and costs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is regulated by the International Standard Organization (ISO, 14040 and 14044); it enables the qualification and quantification of environmental impacts and identifies improvement options throughout the life cycle of a product, process or activity. In this article, LCA is applied in an “anticipatory” fashion at the early stages of the development of the CF synthesis of Rufinamide.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life cycle assessment and cost evaluation of emerging technologies at early stages: The case of continuous flow synthesis of Rufinamide

Grimaldi

Izeppi

Kirschneck

et al. 2020

J Adv Manuf & Process

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In the pharma and fine chemical industries, the development of continuous flow technologies is a process intensification step of primary importance towards the manufacturing of high-quality products, while reducing the environmental impact and cost of production. The sustainability and profitability of a process can be measured through life cycle Assessment and cost evaluation. However, when applied to emerging technologies, these need to be performed at different stages of the process development in order to limit the uncertainties arising from the scale-up, and hence providing high-fidelity projections of environmental impacts and costs at larger scales. The output of the assessment can in fact vary significantly depending on the maturity of the technology and this translates into having different results at commercial scale compared to early estimations. Therefore, in this article, we perform an assessment at two different scales of production, lab and mini-pilot scale, with the aim of quantifying the uncertainties of the assessment related to the scale-up, identifying the hotspots of the system, and hence providing guidelines for the further steps of process development. The subject of the assessment is the continuous flow synthesis of Rufinamide. It is the first time that this synthesis is evaluated at pilot-scale. The results show that low yields in the cycloaddition drastically affect the waste management and the production of precursors, and hence increases environmental impacts and cost of production. This calls for the need of prioritizing the optimization of this synthesis step in order to deploy a green and economically competitive production technology.

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Ex-ante LCA of Emerging Technologies

Cited by 233 publications

References 32 publications

Integrated Innovation and Sustainability Analysis for New Technologies: An approach for collaborative R&D projects

Integrated Innovation and Sustainability Analysis for New Technologies: An approach for collaborative R&D projects

Life cycle assessment of 3D printing geo‐polymer concrete: An ex‐ante study

Life cycle assessment and cost evaluation of emerging technologies at early stages: The case of continuous flow synthesis of Rufinamide

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