Abstract
The environmental burdens of the ethylene oxide production processes are becoming more and more important due to the release of very harmful chemical components as well as its high-energy demand. One way to moderate its environmental burdens within the energy transition period is the natural gas/biomass-based scenarios. However, this Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study reports that natural gas is not a right alternative for this special case, where natural gas-based scenarios are less sustainable than the residual fuel oil-based scenarios particularly concerning fossil depletion (93%), freshwater ecotoxicity (76%), marine ecotoxicity (59%), human ecotoxicity (53%), terrestrial acidification (51%) and particulate matter formation (40%). On the other hand, the LCA study shows that without revamping the heart of the process technology, the reduction in the environmental burdens is possible through biomass. The biomass-based scenarios reduce the burdens from 4.40 to 4.36 MJ (equivalent of non-renewables) according to Cumulative Exergy Demand or from 2.18E−04 to 1.85E−04 (dimensionless normalized results) in accordance with ReCiPe, preparing the way to a sustainable ethylene oxide process within the energy transition period where revamping the heart of the process technology is not desired.
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Abbreviations
- BM:
-
Biomass
- CC:
-
Climate change
- CED:
-
Cumulative Energy Demand
- CML:
-
Centre of Environmental Sciences—Leiden University
- DALY:
-
Disability-adjusted life years
- EM:
-
Energy mix
- EQ:
-
Ecosystem quality
- ES:
-
Ecosystems
- FD:
-
Fossil depletion
- FE:
-
Freshwater ecotoxicity
- FEW:
-
Freshwater eutrophication
- HH:
-
Human health
- LCA:
-
Life Cycle Assessment
- LCI:
-
Life Cycle Inventory
- LCIA:
-
Life Cycle Impact Assessment
- MCS:
-
Monte Carlo simulation
- NG:
-
Natural gas
- NMVOC:
-
Non-methane volatile organic compounds
- OD:
-
Ozone depletion
- PG:
-
Power generation
- PMF:
-
Particulate matter formation
- POF:
-
Photochemical oxidant formation
- ReCiPe:
-
RIVM (RijksinstituutvoorVolksgezondheiden Milieu) and Radboud University, Centre of Environmental Sciences—Leiden University, and PRé Consultants
- RFO:
-
Residual fuel oil
- SY:
-
species.yr
- TA:
-
Terrestrial acidification
- TE:
-
Terrestrial ecotoxicity
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Ghannadzadeh, A., Meymivand, A. Environmental sustainability assessment of an ethylene oxide production process through Cumulative Exergy Demand and ReCiPe. Clean Techn Environ Policy 21, 1765–1777 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-019-01748-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-019-01748-3