Combining ex-ante LCA and EHS screening to assist green design: A case study of cellulose nanocrystal foam

Tan, Lianghui; Mandley, Steven; Peijnenburg, Willie J.G.M.; Loop, Susanne L. Waaijers-van der; Giesen, Daniel; Legradi, Jessica; Shen, Li

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.12.243

Cited by 29 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…Many assumptions and uncertainties are involved in the case of scale-up calculations [108]. Roes and Patel [33] describe the main uncertainties within their analysis comprehensively, whereas, in other studies, no statement is made on the uncertainty of input data or results [32,42,44,45,76,99,[109][110][111]. Several authors address uncertainty with sensitivity analyses to account for parameter variation [22,38,53,60].…”

Section: Uncertaintymentioning

confidence: 99%

How to Conduct Prospective Life Cycle Assessment for Emerging Technologies? A Systematic Review and Methodological Guidance

2020

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Emerging technologies are expected to contribute to environmental sustainable development. However, throughout the development of novel technologies, it is unknown whether emerging technologies can lead to reduced environmental impacts compared to a potentially displaced mature technology. Additionally, process steps suspected to be environmental hotspots can be improved by process engineers early in the development of the emerging technology. In order to determine the environmental impacts of emerging technologies at an early stage of development, prospective life cycle assessment (LCA) should be performed. However, consistency in prospective LCA methodology is lacking. Therefore, this article develops a framework for a prospective LCA in order to overcome the methodological inconsistencies regarding prospective LCAs. The methodological framework was developed using literature on prospective LCAs of emerging technologies, and therefore, a literature review on prospective LCAs was conducted. We found 44 case studies, four review papers, and 17 papers on methodological guidance. Three main challenges for conducting prospective LCAs are identified: Comparability, data, and uncertainty challenges. The issues in defining the aim, functionality, and system boundaries of the prospective LCAs, as well as problems with specifying LCIA methodologies, comprise the comparability challenge. Data availability, quality, and scaling are issues within the data challenge. Finally, uncertainty exists as an overarching challenge when applying a prospective LCA. These three challenges are especially crucial for the prospective assessment of emerging technologies. However, this review also shows that within the methodological papers and case studies, several approaches exist to tackle these challenges. These approaches were systematically summarized within a framework to give guidance on how to overcome the issues when conducting prospective LCAs of emerging technologies. Accordingly, this framework is useful for LCA practitioners who are analyzing early-stage technologies. Nevertheless, further research is needed to develop appropriate scale-up schemes and to include uncertainty analyses for a more in-depth interpretation of results.

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Section: Uncertaintymentioning

confidence: 99%

How to Conduct Prospective Life Cycle Assessment for Emerging Technologies? A Systematic Review and Methodological Guidance

2020

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“…Most studies focus on very narrowly defined system boundaries to exclude uncertain aspect, but as a result, unexpected yet promising research opportunities might be overlooked. Relevant in this context is the story-telling approach of Tan et al [17], who included multiple research iterations of a single technology: they carried out two simulated and two experimental stages. The storyline provides insight into how practical problems were tackled in each iteration from the very start and how this affected further research efforts.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Food products - [54] Ethanol production from wheat straw 3-4 [55] Chlor-alkali electrolysis 3-4 - [56] Fullerene and carbon nanotubes 3-4 [57] Ethylene production from wood 7-8 [58] Membrane filtration system 3-4 [59] Antibacterial T-shirt 5 [11] Energy system 9+ [24] Wastewater treatment 5 [38] Power electronic inverter 9+ [37] Power electronic inverter 9+ [60] agriculture [61] But-1,3-diene 3-4 [62] Renewable energy technologies 9+ [63] Liquid phase batch reactions 3-4 + --n.s. [64] Self-cleaning coated float glass 4-5 [65] PV panels [66] Recycling CdTe PV [67] Caprolactam production 2 [68] Scale up of a generic plant 6-7 [69] Scale up of a generic plant 7-8 [70] LFP-CnF batteries 3-4 [29] Transport systems 9+ [17] Cellulose nanocrystal foam 3 and 4 [71] Bio-based plastics 3 [73] Electricity production 9+ - [74] Metal recovery from e-waste 2-3 [75] Metal recovery from e-waste 2-3 [27] Nanosilver T-shirts 3-4 and6-7 [26,76] PV panels 9+ [77] Ethylene production 4-6 - [78] Electric vehicles 9+ -…”

Section: Framework For Ex-ante Lcamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A detailed analysis of the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) step is beyond the scope of this review. Yet, for the impact assessment, two important topics can be observed in an ex-ante context, namely the time-dependent evaluation of the assessed environmental performance [16] and the lack of required data or relevant impact categories in case disruptive emerging technologies are to be assessed, e.g., data on toxicity for nanotechnology [17]. More information about these topics can be found in [18,19].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Future of Ex-Ante LCA? Lessons Learned and Practical Recommendations

et al. 2019

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Every decision-oriented life cycle assessment (LCAs) entails, at least to some extent, a future-oriented feature. However, apart from the ex-ante LCAs, the majority of LCA studies are retrospective in nature and do not explicitly account for possible future effects. In this review a generic theoretical framework is proposed as a guideline for ex-ante LCA. This framework includes the entire technology life cycle, from the early design phase up to continuous improvements of mature technologies, including their market penetration. The compatibility with commonly applied system models yields an additional aspect of the framework. Practical methods and procedures are categorised, based on how they incorporate future-oriented features in LCA. The results indicate that most of the ex-ante LCAs focus on emerging technologies that have already gone through some research cycles within narrowly defined system boundaries. There is a lack of attention given to technologies that are at a very early development stage, when all options are still open and can be explored at a low cost. It is also acknowledged that technological learning impacts the financial and environmental performance of mature production systems. Once technologies are entering the market, shifts in market composition can lead to substantial changes in environmental performance.

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“…Several reports also proposed the integration of LCA with other methods, such as multi‐criteria decision analysis (MCDA) (Seager & Linkov, ), risk assessment (Barberio, Scalbi, Buttol, Masoni, & Righi, ; Gavankar et al, ; Grieger et al., ), or an environmental, health, and safety screening in order to take into account the toxicity information lacking in LCA (Tan et al., ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life cycle assessment of emerging environmental technologies in the early stage of development: A case study on nanostructured materials

Bartolozzi

Daddi

Punta

et al. 2019

J of Industrial Ecology

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The use of nanostructured materials has been recently proposed in the field of environmental nanoremediation. This approach consists in using nanomaterials not directly, but as building blocks for the design of nano-porous micro-dimensional systems, overcoming the eco-and healthtoxicology risks generally associated with the use of nano-sized technologies. Herein we report the use of life cycle assessment (LCA) as an eco-design tool for optimizing the production of cellulose nanosponges (CNS), nanostructured materials recently developed for water remediation purposes. LCA was applied from the acquisition of raw materials to the synthesis of CNS (from cradleto-gate), considering three production systems, from the lab-level to a modeled scale-up system.The lab-scale LCA identified the main environmental hotspots, namely the energy-consuming steps and the final purification of the material (washing step). In a second lab-scale production, an improvement action could be implemented, switching the washing solvent from methanol to water and decreasing the washing temperature. A second LCA showed a reduced contribution to the impacts from the materials, while the global impacts remained within the same order of magnitude. A simulated scale-up of the process allowed to optimize the energy-consuming steps and the water consumption, through internal recycling. A third LCA assessed the resulting benefits and a decrease in the global impacts by two orders of magnitude. Our study contributes to the discussion of LCA community, providing a focus on the importance of scaling-up of emerging technologies, namely nanostructured porous materials, highlighting the benefits of a LCA based approach since the very beginning of product design (eco-design). K E Y W O R D Scellulose nanosponges, eco-design, life cycle assessment, nanotechnologies, prospective LCA, scale-up

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Combining ex-ante LCA and EHS screening to assist green design: A case study of cellulose nanocrystal foam

Cited by 29 publications

References 42 publications

How to Conduct Prospective Life Cycle Assessment for Emerging Technologies? A Systematic Review and Methodological Guidance

How to Conduct Prospective Life Cycle Assessment for Emerging Technologies? A Systematic Review and Methodological Guidance

The Future of Ex-Ante LCA? Lessons Learned and Practical Recommendations

Life cycle assessment of emerging environmental technologies in the early stage of development: A case study on nanostructured materials

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