Life-Cycle Assessment of Potential Algal Biodiesel Production in the United Kingdom: A Comparison of Raceways and Air-Lift Tubular Bioreactors

2010 ◽  
Vol 24 (7) ◽  
pp. 4062-4077 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna L. Stephenson ◽  
Elena Kazamia ◽  
John S. Dennis ◽  
Christopher J. Howe ◽  
Stuart A. Scott ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Biodiesel Production ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Algal Biodiesel ◽  
Air Lift

scholarly journals Organizational Life Cycle Assessment of a Service Providing SME for Renewable Energy Projects (PV and Wind) in the United Kingdom

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 4475 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hendrik Marx ◽  
Silvia Forin ◽  
Matthias Finkbeiner
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Organizational Life ◽  
Organizational Life Cycle ◽  
System Boundaries ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Methodological Challenges ◽  
Internal Operations ◽  
Organizational Life Cycle Assessment

Companies are increasingly interested in reducing their environmental footprint. Thereby, they face the challenge of identifying and mitigating their specific impacts and hotspots and simultaneously avoid burden shifting. The organizational life cycle assessment (OLCA) method was conceived and successfully tested for the assessment if companies’ potential environmental impacts. Still, the method poses methodological challenges for the application to service providing organizations. In this paper, OLCA was applied to a service providing SME in the photovoltaic and wind energy business in the United Kingdom. The environmental impact profile of the reporting organization is dominated by transport activities, including the technicians’ trips to the solar farms, employee commuting, and business travels. According to the main goals of the study (gaining insights in internal operations and improving organizational procedures), recommendations to reduce travel-related impacts are provided. For existing methodological challenges like selecting the reporting flow and setting the system boundaries, innovative solutions like defining multiple reporting flows for different activities and to partly include service receiving objects in system boundaries are discussed with the aim to facilitate future applications.

The use of the risk assessment in the life cycle assessment framework

2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Francesca Milazzo ◽  
Francesco Spina
Keyword(s):  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Human Health ◽  
Biodiesel Production ◽  
Health Impacts ◽  
Complete Analysis ◽  
Transfer Factors ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Human Health Impacts

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to quantify the human health impacts of soy-biodiesel production with the aim to discuss about its environmental sustainability. Design/methodology/approach – The integrated use of two current approaches, risk assessment (RA) and life cycle assessment (LCA), has allowed improvement of the potentialities of both in obtaining a more complete analysis. The implementation of a life cycle indicator for the assessment of the impacts on the human health, integrating the features of both approaches, is the main focus of this paper. Findings – It has been found that, although the biodiesel is a green fuel, it has some criticalities in its life cycle, which cannot be disregarded. In fact, even if biodiesel is essentially a clean fuel there are some phases, prior to the industrial phase, that can cause negative effects on human health and ecosystems. Practical implications – Results suggest some measures which can be adopted to substantially reduce human health impacts. Further alternative could be analysed in future to gain more insight about the use of biodiesel fuels. Originality/value – The estimation of the impacts of a process producing biodiesel has been made by using a novel approach. The novelty is associated with the calculation of the impacts on human health by using the transfer factors applied in RA. The use of such factors, properly modified in order to estimate the impacts on a wider scale than a site-dimension, allows defining a holistic approach, as LCA and RA are used as complete units but at the same time can be related to each other.

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