Software integration of life cycle assessment and economic analysis for process evaluation

Abstract

Creating a sustainable future offers challenges to engineers to develop chemical process designs that are not only technically and economically feasible but also environmental friendly. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool for identifying and quantifying environmental impacts of the process or product in order to select an optimal design from various alternatives. In this research, a new LCA software, LCSoft, was developed for the evaluation of chemical and petrochemical processes with the option of integration with other process design tools such as sustainable design (SustainPro), economic analysis (ECON) and process simulation. The software framework contains four main parts: Tool 1, life cycle inventory (LCI) knowledge management, enabling easy maintenance and future expansion of the LCI database; Tool 2, estimation of environmental factors using the group contributionᐩ method (GCᐩ) in order to calculate environmental impacts for a wide range of chemicals; Tool 3, LCA calculation models; and Tool 4, options for tool integration. To test the program, a bioethanol production process using cassava rhizome was used as a case study. Results from LCSoft show an accurate estimation of the environmental performance in various aspects such as carbon footprint, resource and energy consumption, and other environmental impacts as compared to commercial LCA software. Thus, LCSoft can provide a systematic analysis of economic and sustainable performance and help obtain a sustainable design more efficiently.