Towards Sustainable Chemical Process Design: Revisiting the Integration of Life Cycle Assessment

IF 9.7 1区环境科学与生态学 Q1 ENGINEERING, ENVIRONMENTAL

Journal of Cleaner Production Pub Date : 2025-01-22 DOI:10.1016/j.jclepro.2025.144831

Bartolomeus Häussling Löwgren, Christian Hoffmann, Martina G. Vijver, Bernhard Steubing, Giuseppe Cardellini

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Abstract

Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is essential for sustainable chemical process design. However, current integrations treat LCA as a top-level environmental assessment tool, risking superficial integration and perpetuating conventional process design assumptions. This contribution reviews how LCA is integrated with model-based chemical process design. It focuses on current practices, challenges in goal and scope, modelling, computational, and interpretation integration, and discusses the integration of LCA's core features alongside profit-driven assumptions.The contribution identified more than 100 articles via a hybrid search method and reviewed 53 based on a saturation curve, resulting in 25 metrics to assess process design and LCA integration. To assist practitioners, a comprehensive classification of computational integrations is provided. The review highlights the following gaps: most studies (74%) focus only on cradle-to-gate phases, neglect use and end-of-life phases (89%) and do not define the function (92%). However, including a user function perspective could enhance the integration of use and end-of-life scenarios, supporting circular strategies and sufficiency measures. Additionally, environmental externalities are systematically excluded during model linkage, and most studies concentrate on energy utilities (75%) and material inputs (70%), whereas emissions (26%), waste, and wastewater (25%) are frequently overlooked, which emphasises the dominance of economic factors in current design studies.

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迈向可持续化工过程设计：重新审视生命周期评估的整合

生命周期评价（LCA）是可持续化工过程设计的基础。然而，当前的集成将LCA视为顶级环境评估工具，冒着表面集成和延续传统过程设计假设的风险。这篇文章回顾了LCA是如何与基于模型的化学过程设计相结合的。它侧重于当前的实践、目标和范围的挑战、建模、计算和解释集成，并讨论了LCA核心特征与利润驱动假设的集成。该贡献通过混合搜索方法确定了100多篇文章，并基于饱和曲线审查了53篇文章，得出了25个评估流程设计和LCA集成的指标。为了帮助从业者，提供了计算集成的全面分类。该综述强调了以下差距：大多数研究（74%）只关注从摇篮到gate阶段，忽视使用和生命终止阶段（89%），并且没有定义功能（92%）。然而，包括用户功能角度可以增强使用和寿命终止情景的整合，支持循环战略和充分性措施。此外，在模型关联过程中，环境外部性被系统地排除在外，大多数研究集中在能源公用事业（75%）和材料投入（70%）上，而排放（26%）、废物和废水（25%）经常被忽视，这强调了经济因素在当前设计研究中的主导地位。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of Cleaner Production 环境科学-工程：环境

CiteScore

20.40

自引率

9.00%

发文量

4720

审稿时长

111 days

期刊介绍： The Journal of Cleaner Production is an international, transdisciplinary journal that addresses and discusses theoretical and practical Cleaner Production, Environmental, and Sustainability issues. It aims to help societies become more sustainable by focusing on the concept of 'Cleaner Production', which aims at preventing waste production and increasing efficiencies in energy, water, resources, and human capital use. The journal serves as a platform for corporations, governments, education institutions, regions, and societies to engage in discussions and research related to Cleaner Production, environmental, and sustainability practices.