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6E - Life-Cycle Management (MO2/10) Elaboration of an environmental profile for industrial processes for different levels of detail and category indicators. Herrera, Israel, Schuhmacher, Marta , Castells, Francesc, ABSTRACT- The environmental assessment is an activity that allows to identify and predict possible impacts, risks, or damages, caused by the different human activities on global or specific landscapes. This aspect has been showing an increasing importance in the field of the engineering in the lasts decades. Nevertheless, given its complexity can become a costly task both economically and technically. There exist several ways to perform this evaluation, depending on the goals and scopes of the study, areas of protection and the available information. On the other hand, the characterisation and definition of category indicators in terms of mid or end point, allows to make a oriented evaluation towards general or specific goals, independently of the studied activity. In this frame, this work defines an environmental profile for industrial activities that includes from a material and energy balance, obtained by a life cycle inventory, a fate and exposure assessment for several routes and compartments or the impacts and risks for human and ecosystems, to a rigorous environmental damage profile. Furthermore, the relevant information and the stages to define new indicators based on the mid and end points categories are involved. In order to elaborate this profile for a defined level of detail, an environmental assessment for a practical industrial case (Separation of Iso-pentane from a stream of Naphtha) has been developed. Key words: Process life cycle assessment, Environmental profile , Processes Environmental Analysis, Categories indicator |
