Chalmers Conferences, LCM 2013

SUSTAINABLE INNOVATION OF CHEMICALS: USING LCA AS A METRICS IN ADVANCING AND SCALING UP GREEN CHEMISTRY RESEARCH
Guido W. Sonnemann, Amandine Foulet, Philippe Garrigues

Last modified: 2014-09-11

Abstract


The concept of Green Chemistry was coined in the 1990s and can be briefly defined as applying the pollution prevention approach to chemistry. LCA is a technique to assess environmental impacts associated with all the stages of a product's life from-cradle-to-grave. If this method is applied in the form of a gate-to-gate LCA it provides the environmental profile, or footprint, of a chemical or material composed of multiple chemicals. A criticism to the 12 green chemistry principles as a tool is their qualitative nature. Using two examples, this paper shows how LCA can help evaluating the 12 principles in concrete cases of advancing green chemistry research towards the sustainable innovation of chemicals. Emphasis is made to show the potential for using LCA as a metrics in scaling up this research.

Keywords


Sustainable innovation; chemicals; LCA metrics; green chemistry

References


Anastas P.T., Warner J.C. (1998) Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice, Oxford University Press, New York

Clark J.H. and Macquarrie D.J. (eds, 2002) Handbook of Green Chemistry and Technology, Blackwell Science, Oxford, UK

Muñoz I. (2012) LCA in Green Chemistry: a new subject area and call for papers, Int J Life Cycle Assess 17:517–519

Anastas, P.T. , Lankey R.L. (2006) Life-Cycle Assessment and Green Chemistry: The Yin and Yang of Industrial Ecology. Green Chem. 6: 289-295

Gustafsson L.M., Börjesson P. (2007) Life Cycle Assessment in Green Chemistry - A comparison of various industrial wood surface coatings, Int J Life Cycle Assess 12:151–159

Domenech X., Ayllon J.A., Peral J., Rieradeval J. (2002) How Green Is a Chemical Reaction? Application of LCA to Green Chemistry, Environ. Sci. Technol. 36: 5517-5520,

Cavani F., Centi G., Perathoner S., Trifiro F. (2009) Sustainable Industrial Processes, WILEY-VCH Verlag, Weinheim, Germany

Marquevich M., Sonnemann G. Castells F., Montané D. (2002) Life cycle inventory analysis of hydrogen production by the steam-reforming process: comparison between vegetable oils and fossil fuels as feedstock, Green Chemistry 4: 414–423


Full Text: PDF