Life Cycle Assessment Coupled with Process Simulation under Uncertainty for Reduced Environmental Impact: Application to Phosphoric Acid Production

Abstract

One of the most important drawbacks of life cycle assessment (LCA)-related analysis is the generation of reliable data. In the proposed methodology, this drawback is addressed using data from process simulations, based on first-principles models in the LCA calculations. Furthermore, uncertainty that arises from industrial data and a simulation hypothesis are explicitly incorporated, using Monte Carlo sampling, which allows statistical information to be translated into a set of representative scenarios for which the LCA calculations are performed. The combined use of LCA, process simulation, and sampling techniques results in a powerful environmentally conscious quantitative tool whose objective is to guide decision-makers toward the adoption of more-sustainable process alternatives. The main objective of the methodology is to show the main differences between production options. This novel methodology is applied to the specific case of phosphoric acid (PA) production.

Environmental impacts of phosphoric acid production using di-hemihydrate process: a Belgian case study

“…As mentioned in literature, it is generally well accepted that the destiny of phosphogypsum and its associated leachates are the main environmental hazards in phosphoric acid process and should be handled with care to avoid high eutrophication impact (Bojarski et al, 2008;Silva and Kulay, 2005). Even if the phosphogypsum is not as economically profitable as phosphoric acid, its valorisation avoids disposal costs.…”

“…The Ecoinvent report explains how databases have been modelled for both US and Morocco sites at the commercial grade (Primas and Capello, 2004). Bojarski et al (2008) modelled the wet phosphoric acid production process, varying the destiny of phosphogypsum and using data from a real process plant located in Greece. Two other papers compared wet and thermal processes for phosphate fertilizer production.…”

Sustainable Design and Operation of a Reactive Distillation System Used for the Production of Cosmetic Ingredients

“…The first step in the procedure is building a plausible model for generating the data needed for calculation of the metrics (Bojarski et al, 2008). In this case the model is constructed using commercial process simulation tools.…”

Novel Process Windows for Enabling, Accelerating, and Uplifting Flow Chemistry

“…Bojarski et al. further suggested overcoming data gaps by process simulations of technical processes, handling the uncertainty that arose from industrial data and a simulation hypothesis by Monte Carlo sampling 195. They argued that the approach allowed the statistical information to be translated into a set of representative LCA scenarios to support decisions during process design.…”