Revision and extension of Eco-LCA metrics for sustainability assessment of the energy and chemical processes.
Ecologically based life cycle assessment (Eco-LCA) is an appealing approach for the evaluation of resources utilization and environmental impacts of the process industries from an ecological scale. However, the aggregated metrics of Eco-LCA suffer from some drawbacks: the environmental impact metric has limited applicability; the resource utilization metric ignores indirect consumption; the renewability metric fails to address the quantitative distinction of resources availability; the productivity metric seems self-contradictory. In this paper, the existing Eco-LCA metrics are revised and extended for sustainability assessment of the energy and chemical processes. A new Eco-LCA metrics system is proposed, including four independent dimensions: environmental impact, resource utilization, resource availability, and economic effectiveness. An illustrative example of comparing assessment between a gas boiler and a solar boiler process provides insight into the features of the proposed approach.
School of Chemical Engineering, South China University of Technology , Guangzhou 510640, People's Republic of China.
Shiying
S
Yang
Siyu
S
Yang
Andrzej
A
Kraslawski
Yu
Y
Qian
D055598:Chemical Phenomena; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000191:economics; D017753:Ecosystem; D004736:Energy-Generating Resources / Q000191:economics; D005740:Gases / Q000737:chemistry; D012993:Solar Energy
D005740:Gases