Integration of CAPE and LCA Tools in Environmentally-Conscious Process Design: A Case Study on Biomass-Derived Resin

Abstract Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a strong tool for quantifying the environmental impact associated with a product life cycle. To implement LCA into environmentally-conscious process design, the lack of inventory data should be addressed by computer-aided process engineering (CAPE) tools. This study proposes the process design framework integrating CAPE and LCA tools. Missing inventory data is estimated by process simulation with design information extracted from literatures and design heuristics. At this time, the sensitivity of design settings to LCA results should be analyzed to generate design requirements for further process design stages. This study demonstrates the proposed procedure by a case study on biomass-derived polypropylene (PP). In the case study, it is demonstrated that the potential of biomass-derived resin to reduce environmental impact due to the production of PP. At the same time, it was also revealed that the environmental impact could be increased by implementation of biomass resource as raw material, because of the increase of GHG emission in biomass cultivation site.