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Development & Demonstration of LCA Methodology for an Environmental Bioprocess
Description:
Under an Interagency Agreement/Cooperative Agreement, this jointly funded EPA/DOE project was conducted with Battelle Columbus, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and National Renewable Energy Laboratory in support of DOE=s Alternative Feedstocks Program.This project concentrated on methodology development for life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) and application of a streamlined LCIA to conduct a case study involving two alternative routes of production for 1,4-butanediol (i.e., comparing corn-derived feedstock alternative to the traditional natural gas-derived feedstock).The study was conducted with ten emissions-related impact categories and four resource depletion categories. Normalization was conducted from three perspectives depending on the global, regional or local scale, and was based on the relative contribution of the impact to the total expected impacts within the impact area.Five of the fourteen impact categories (i.e., particulate effects, water use, acidification, photochemical oxidation, and eutrophication) included regional scaling factors based on the sensitivity of the impact area .Weighting factors were determined using an Analytical Hierarchical Process.Ten of the 14 impact categories were considered to be differentiable, and 9 of the ten differentiable categories favored the natural gas-derived feedstock production route.The major impacts were the result of the electricity requirements of the corn-derived process that consumed nine times as much energy as the traditional process. Because the alternative process is still in development, if significant advances are made in reduced energy consumption for this process, or steps were taken to provide a significantly different fuel source in the electricity generation, another analysis may be warranted.
Status: A final report is in draft form.
Estimated Completion Date: FY00
Available Deliverables: A final report is in draft form.
Principle Investigator:
Jane Bare
bare.jane@epa.gov