Recent developments in Life Cycle Assessment.

Sustainable solvents are a topic of growing interest in both the research community and the chemical industry due to a growing awareness of the impact of solvents on pollution, energy usage, and contributions to air quality and climate change. Solvent losses represent a major portion of organic pollution, and solvent removal represents a large proportion of process energy consumption. To counter these issues, a range of greener or more sustainable solvents have been proposed and developed over the past three decades. Much of the focus has been on the environmental credentials of the solvent itself, although how a substance is deployed is as important to sustainability as what it is made from. In this Review, we consider several aspects of the most prominent sustainable organic solvents in use today, ionic liquids, deep eutectic solvents, supercritical fluids, switchable solvents, liquid polymers, and renewable solvents. We examine not only the performance of each class of solvent within the context of the...

Green and Sustainable Solvents in Chemical Processes

Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use (AFOLU) is unique among the sectors considered in this volume, since the mitigation potential is derived from both an enhancement of removals of greenhouse gases (GHG), as well as reduction of emissions through management of land and livestock (robust evidence; high agreement). The land provides food that feeds the Earth’s human population of ca. 7 billion, fibre for a variety of purposes, livelihoods for billions of people worldwide, and is a critical resource for sustainable development in many regions. Agriculture is frequently central to the livelihoods of many social groups, especially in developing countries where it often accounts for a significant share of production. In addition to food and fibre, the land provides a multitude of ecosystem services; climate change mitigation is just one of many that are vital to human well-being (robust evidence; high agreement). Mitigation options in the AFOLU sector, therefore, need to be assessed, as far as possible, for their potential impact on all other services provided by land. [Section 11.1]

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Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU)

In recent years, the use of flax fibres as reinforcement in composites has gained popularity due to an increasing requirement for developing sustainable materials. Flax fibres are cost-effective and offer specific mechanical properties comparable to those of glass fibres. Composites made of flax fibres with thermoplastic, thermoset, and biodegradable matrices have exhibited good mechanical properties. This review presents a summary of recent developments of flax fibre and its composites. Firstly, the fibre structure, mechanical properties, cost, the effect of various parameters (i.e. relative humidity, various physical/chemical treatments, gauge length, fibre diameter, fibre location in a stem, oleaginous, mechanical defects such as kink bands) on tensile properties of flax fibre have been reviewed. Secondly, the effect of fibre configuration (i.e. in forms of fabric, mat, yarn, roving and monofilament), manufacturing processes, fibre volume, and fibre/matrix interface parameters on the mechanical properties of flax fibre reinforced composites have been reviewed. Next, the studies of life cycle assessment and durability investigation of flax fibre reinforced composites have been reviewed.

Flax fibre and its composites – A review

Microalgae biorefinery: High value products perspectives.

The basic idea of LCA is that all environmental burdens connected with a product or service have to be assessed, back to the raw materials and down to waste removal. Therefore, the term “Life Cycle Assessment” is more precise than the German “Okobilanz” or the French “ecobilan”. This basic idea is undoubtedly true, and LCA is the only environmental assessment tool which avoids positive ratings for measurements which only consists in the shifting of burdens.

Life cycle assessment: From the beginning to the current state.

Part II: Persistence and Degradability of Organic Chemicals The criteria “Persistence” and “Degradability” are defined and explained, starting from the “functional” definition of the environment. In this definition, theenvironment is the counterpart of thetechnosphere, which consists of all processes controlled by man. A substance is persistent if there are no sinks (degradation processes). It is shown that persistence is the central and most important criterium of environmental hazard assessment of organic chemicals. It follows that all substances released into the environment should be degradable, preferentially into small inorganic molecules (mineralization). As examples for persistent substances, the polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB), the chlorofluorohydrocarbons (CFC), bis (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), and 2,3,7,8-tetrachloro-dibenzo-dioxin (TCDD) are discussed. Finally, an attempt to quantify persistence is made.

Environmental hazard : Assessment of chemicals and products.

Background, Aim and Scope
Modelling of the fate of environmental chemicals can be done by relatively simple multi-media box models or using complex atmospheric transport models It was the aim of this work to compare the results obtained for both types of models using a small set of non-ionic and non-polar or moderately polar organic chemicals, known to be distributed over long distances

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Multicompartmental fate of persistent substances. Comparison of predictions from multi-media box models and a multicompartment chemistry-atmospheric transport model.

Background
LCA is the only internationally standardized environmental assessment tool (ISO 14040-43) for product systems, including services and processes. The analysis is done ‘from cradle-to-grave’, i.e. over the whole life cycle. LCA is essentially a comparative method: different systems fulfilling the same function (serving the same purpose) are compared on the basis of a ‘functional unit’ - a quantitative measure of this function or purpose. It is often believed that LCA can be used for judging the (relative) sustainability of product systems. This is only partly true, however, since LCA is restricted to the environmental part of the triad ‘environment/ecology - economy - social aspects (including intergenerational fairness)’ which constitutes sustainability. Standardized assessment tools for the second and the third part are still lacking, but Life Cycle Costing (LCC) seems to be a promising candidate for the economic part. Social Life Cycle Assessment still has to be developed on the basis of known social indicators.

Walter Klöpffer

Papers

Life cycle assessment: From the beginning to the current state.

Environmental hazard : Assessment of chemicals and products.

Multicompartmental fate of persistent substances. Comparison of predictions from multi-media box models and a multicompartment chemistry-atmospheric transport model.

Life Cycle Assessment as Part of Sustainability Assessment for Chemicals (5 pp)

Environmental hazard : Assessment of chemicals and products Part I: General assessment principles.