Environmental and energy assessment of petrochemical products using life cycle assessment (LCA) technique

Abstract

As a part of the Thailand National LCI Database Development project, this research aims to assess the environmental impacts of the petrochemical industry in Thailand overing upstream, middle-stream and downstream industries. Polyvinylchloride (PVC) has been chosen as a model to study the environmental impacts associated with its production using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) technique. The scope of the study includes the production of ethylene, vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) and PVC. In addition, three distinguished scenarios are analyzed for PVC production and compared for their environmental performance based on LCI data supplied by industrial associations and electronic databases. Theyare PVC manufactured from a fully integrated process, from a compounding process using manufactured from a fully integrated process, from a compounding process using imprted VCM, and finally PVC imported from Europe. The results show that the fully integrated process has the poorest environmental performance, whereas the compounding process is better and quite comparable to European technology. The main cause has been shown to be the production of VCM in the fully integrated process, where there is a sizable amount of noxious NOxin air effluent which evidently results in severe respiratory diseases. In addition, the study has found that by increasing the ratio of imported VCM for PVC manufacturing from the present value of 12.4% to 30% or 40%, the overall environmental burdens can be markedly reduced by 20% and 30%, respectively. However, other factors, such as social and economic effects, should be taken into consideration before implementing any change.