Comparison of different Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methods and software to evaluate improvements in chemical processes

José Miguel Furtado; Ana Carvalho; Ana Filipa Mimoso; Acácio Nobre Mendes; Henrique A. Matos

Informações chave

Autores:

José Miguel Furtado; Ana Carvalho (Ana Isabel Cerqueira de Sousa Gouveia Carvalho); Ana Filipa Mimoso (Ana Filipa Carvalho Mimoso); Acácio Nobre Mendes (Acácio Miguel Nobre Mendes); Henrique A. Matos (Henrique Aníbal Santos de Matos)

Publicado em

Novembro 2013

Resumo

Two different Life Cycle Impact Assessment methods (Impact 2002+ and ReCiPe) were applied to evaluate two design alternatives for the ammonia’s production process: a base case design and a new improved design obtained by process retrofitting. Both methods were applied using two LCA software, GaBi and SimaPro, in order to compare the two software. The methods and software tools were compared in terms of their inventories, characterisation factors and single score values. The main contribution of this paper is the comparison of different software. The results obtained from this analysis pointed out the requirement of a careful selection of methods and software tools applied to comparison of design alternatives.