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Produce It Sustainably: Life Cycle Assessment of a Biomanufacturing Process Through the Ontology Lens

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Advances in Production Management Systems. Production Management Systems for Responsible Manufacturing, Service, and Logistics Futures (APMS 2023)

Part of the book series: IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology ((IFIPAICT,volume 692))

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Abstract

An ontological perspective to addressing sustainability issues in biomanufacturing on the journey to the circular economy is represented in this paper. Even though sustainability goes beyond the environmental dimension from the triple bottom line framework (including environmental, economic, and social dimensions), given the importance of the environmental dimension, this study has prioritized an ontology for LCA to account for sustainability.

LCA is widely used for estimating the environmental burden of a given production process. However, several conventions currently exist for representing the data required for LCA. The inconsistencies when utilizing LCA data from multiple sources make human readability and understanding difficult, and subsequent data analysis protracted and inefficient. Therefore, we propose the alignment of terms and definitions provided by Industrial Ontologies Foundry (IOF) Core with LCA terminology from ISO 14040 guidelines. With a particular focus on CO2 emission assessment, we demonstrated how the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) ontological term formalization could be applied to a biomanufacturing process use case. The ontological representation of LCA allows easier comparative analysis between changes in a manufacturing arrangement and the corresponding LCA result. The ontology-assisted comparative analysis could potentially accelerate the identification of a manufacturing process with the lowest carbon footprint and reveal the key contributors to carbon emissions.

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Disclaimer

Certain commercial software products are identified in this paper. These products were used only for demonstration purposes. Their use does not imply approval or endorsement by NIST, nor does it imply these products are necessarily the best available for the purpose.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, U.S.A.

    Ana Nikolov, Milos Drobnjakovic & Boonserm Kulvatunyou

Authors
  1. Ana Nikolov
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  2. Milos Drobnjakovic
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  3. Boonserm Kulvatunyou
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ana Nikolov .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

    Erlend Alfnes

  2. Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

    Anita Romsdal

  3. Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

    Jan Ola Strandhagen

  4. ZF Friedrichshafen AG, Friedrichshafen, Germany

    Gregor von Cieminski

  5. Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico City, Mexico

    David Romero

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Nikolov, A., Drobnjakovic, M., Kulvatunyou, B. (2023). Produce It Sustainably: Life Cycle Assessment of a Biomanufacturing Process Through the Ontology Lens. In: Alfnes, E., Romsdal, A., Strandhagen, J.O., von Cieminski, G., Romero, D. (eds) Advances in Production Management Systems. Production Management Systems for Responsible Manufacturing, Service, and Logistics Futures. APMS 2023. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 692. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43688-8_35

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43688-8_35

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-43687-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-43688-8

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