This is an author's version published in: http://oatao.univ-toulouse.fr/23721 ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Keywords:Rainwater hatvesting Environmental impacts Life cycle assessment Water footprintLife cycle assessment methodology along with water footprint analysis was used to assess the envi ronmental impacts of a domestic rainwater harvesting system (RWH) in France. Firstly, the relevance of substituting drinking water(DW) with rainwater in a private individual household was studied. Secondly, the effect of several parameters namely construction of infrastructures, building scale and disinfection were evaluated. The quantification of environmental impacts was performed using Ecoinvent inventory data and Impact 2002+ evaluation method. The water footprint was assessed through the water stress indicator (WS(}. From an environmental standpoint, the RWH system has only slightly higher impact than the DW system. The consumption of electricity for pumping generates the strongest impact. The analysis of the WSI showed that the RWH system can relieve a stress on water resources where it exists. Consideration of infrastructures and disinfection turns environmental impacts significantly higher in ail impact categories. Setting up the RWH system at bigger scale, i.e., building scale, is a bit Jess favoured than the RWH system at household se.ale. This study aims at pointing out areas of improvement which need to be further studied to make RWH systems more sustainable.
International audienceEnzymatic hydrolysis of the main components of lignocellulosic biomass is one of the promising methods to further upgrading it into biofuels. Biomass pre-treatment is an essential step in order to reduce cellu- lose crystallinity, increase surface and porosity and separate the major constituents of biomass. Scientific literature in this domain is increasing fast and could be a valuable source of data. As these abundant sci- entific data are mostly in textual format and heterogeneously structured, using them to compute biomass pre-treatment efficiency is not straightforward. This paper presents the implementation of a Decision Support System (DSS) based on an original pipeline coupling knowledge engineering (KE) based on semantic web technologies, soft computing techniques and environmental factor computation. The DSS allows using data found in the literature to assess environmental sustainability of biorefinery sys- tems. The pipeline permits to: (1) structure and integrate relevant experimental data, (2) assess data source reliability, (3) compute and visualize green indicators taking into account data imprecision and source reliability. This pipeline has been made possible thanks to innovative researches in the coupling of ontologies, uncertainty management and propagation. In this first version, data acquisition is done by experts and facilitated by a termino-ontological resource. Data source reliability assessment is based on domain knowledge and done by experts. The operational prototype has been used by field experts on a realistic use case (rice straw). The obtained results have validated the usefulness of the system. Further work will address the question of a higher automation level for data acquisition and data source reliabil- ity assessment
Purpose A life-cycle assessment (LCA) was performed to evaluate the environmental impacts of the remediation of industrial soils contaminated by polychlorobiphenyl (PCB). Two new bioremediation treatment options were compared with the usual incineration process. In this attributional LCA, only secondary impacts were considered. The contaminated soil used for the experiments contained 200 mg of PCB per kilogram. Methods Three off-site treatment scenarios were studied: 1) bioremediation with mechanical aeration, 2) bioremediation with electric aeration and 3) incineration with natural gas. Bioremediation processes were designed from lab-scale, scale-up and pilot experiments. The incineration technique was inspired by a French plant. A semi-quantitative uncertainty analysis was performed on the data. Environmental impacts were evaluated with the CML 2001 method using the SimaPro software.Results and discussion In most compared categories, the bioremediation processes are favorable. Of the bioremediation options, the lowest environmental footprint was observed for electric aeration. The uncertainty analysis supported the results that compared incineration and bioremediation but decreased the difference between the options of aeration. The distance of transportation was one of the most sensitive parameters, especially for bioremediation. At equal distances between the polluted sites and the treatment plant, bioremediation had fewer impacts than incineration in eight out of 13 categories. Conclusions The use of natural gas for the incineration process generated the most impacts. Irrespective of the aeration option, bioremediation was better than incineration. The time of treatment should be taken into account. More precise and detailed data are required for the incineration scenario. More parameters of biological treatments should be measured. LCA results should be completed using ecological and health risk assessment and an acceptability evaluation.
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