Environmental impact assessment tools

Engineer processes and products holistically, use systems analysis, and integrate environmental impact assessment tools. 

Processes and products should be engineered holistically using systems analysis and integrating environmental impact assessment tools. 

Over the last decades direct and indirect environmental effects of human activities has become a focus of special attention of the general public, state authorities, and international organizations. A number of approaches to predict, evaluate, and mitigate human-induced alterations in the biophysical environment have emerged including environmental impact assessment (EIA). EIA has become a powerful tool to prevent and mitigate environmental impacts of proposed economic developments. 

Tools for environmental impact assessment of process designs. 

Based on the process description above, Table 6.11 can be generated which contains the total emission of each pollutant. Emissions are converted to impact indicators using the environmental fate and impact assessment tool EFRAT.79 A comparison of environmental indicators for MA production from either benzene or n-butane is shown in Table 6.12. All of the environmental indices in the n-butane process are less than or equal... 

Environmental impact assessment has already shown its value for implementing and strengthening sustainable development, as it combines the precautionary principle of preventing environmental damage and also arranges for public participation. EIA has also become the major tool for an integrated approach to the protection of the environment since it requires a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of an activity on the environment, contrary to the traditional sectoral approach. Moreover, EIA requires the formulation of alternatives to the proposed activity and brings facts and information on environmental impacts to the attention of the decision-makers and the public. 

Environmental problem solving creates major conflict areas with the politicians in developing countries. For example. Environmental Impact Assessment Studies is a good Eulerian approach to predict the effects of transport phenomena and a very convenient planning tool for future activities. However, in its application local politicians may block the scientific opinions from reaching the public. Thus new technologies such as pollution prevention measures are sometimes refused. Thus they cause local people to lose an economic benefit, although it ensures the future of politicians near election time. 

Bernard DP, Hunsaker DB Jr, Marmorek DR (1993) Tools for improving predictive capabilities of environmental impact assessments Structured hypotheses, audits and monitoring. In Hildebrand SG, Cannon JB (eds) Environmental analysis The NEPA experience. Lewis, Boca Raton, Florida, pp 547-564... 

Since life cycle assessment (LCA) can be more than an environmental impact assessment approach, chapter Life Cycle Sustainabiftty Assessment A Holistic Evaluation of Social, Economic, and Environmental Impacts discusses life cycle sustainabiftty assessment. This extends the holistic environmental LCA to account for the economic and social pillars of sustainabiftty. Lastly, chapter Embedding Sustainabiftty in Product and Process Development—The Role of Process Systems Engineers describes the practical role of process systems engineers in the implementation of sustainabiftty in product and process development. It shows some key aspects and tools that practitioners should take into account to design and develop more sustainable products and processes during material selection, process design, process and product modeling, and supply chain implications. 

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)—a reference tool for Environmental Professionals conducting Environmental Impact Assessments of facility-related projects, new or... 

In terms of sustainability, there are several direct and indirect impacts to be considered and it is advisable to use the tools classically available in environmental impact assessment. In this regard were highlighted the concern in relation to the possible leaching of products used in biocide treatment and the problems associated with one of the popular choices in terms of interventions which is the use of a sacrificial layer that would imply the impacts associated with the preparation of the replacement mortars (such as periodic consumption of resources and CO2 emissions). The sustainability analyses needs to consider the balance between periodicity of applications and the effects of more permanent solutions. In general there is scarce reflection on the sustainability implications of these procedures for conservation of materials. 

The presented framework has been integrated with the sustainability and environmental impact assessment. Both sustainability and environmental impact analysis are performed using two in-honse software tools, SustainPro (Carvalho et al., 2013) and LCSoft (Kalakul et al., 2014), respectively. As a prerequisite for this step, some extra data are needed such as rigorous mass and energy balance, connectivity among the unit operations within the flowsheet, duty, and reaction data which are explained in more detail in the following text. 

In summary, the framework presented is a promising tool to represent the ever-increasing number of biorefinery alternatives with their competing technologies and routes and help evaluate them at their optimality for early-stage design and analysis purposes in terms of techno-economic analysis. Sustainability analysis and environmental impact assessment are included in the framework which enables a more detailed and comprehensive analysis of the biorefinery alternatives. The framework helps formulate a multicriteria evaluation (techno-economic, environmental impact, and sustainability analysis) of the biorefinery concept. 

A wide range of sustainability-assessment methods have been developed in recent years. Some well-known and commonly used tools for sustainability assessment are Criteria and Indicators (C I), Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA), Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), and Cost—Benefit Analysis (CB A) (Buytaert et al., 2011). This section focuses on LCA, aiming to present its basic stages. 

Air Pollution Dispersion Application of air dispersion modeling principles and EPA tools to assessing environmental impacts from stack and area releases of pollutants Dispersion theory Gaussian plume model Ground-level concentrations Worst case scenarios Air quality impact assessments Stationary source emissions... 

The Chemical Process Industry (CPI) uses various quantitative and qualitative techniques to assess the reliability and risk of process equipment, process systems, and chemical manufacturing operations. These techniques identify the interactions of equipment, systems, and persons that have potentially undesirable consequences. In the case of reliability analyses, the undesirable consequences (e.g., plant shutdown, excessive downtime, or production of off-specification product) are those incidents which reduce system profitability through loss of production and increased maintenance costs. In the case of risk analyses, the primary concerns are human injuries, environmental impacts, and system damage caused by occurrence of fires, explosions, toxic material releases, and related hazards. Quantification of risk in terms of the severity of the consequences and the likelihood of occurrence provides the manager of the system with an important decisionmaking tool. By using the results of a quantitative risk analysis, we are better able to answer such questions as, Which of several candidate systems poses the least risk Are risk reduction modifications necessary and What modifications would be most effective in reducing risk ... 

Abstract Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a useful tool to assess impacts of cradle-to-grave chains of products/services. In the Riskcycle framework, the focus is on additives. Additives are usually minor constituents of products, but depending on their specific properties they can be important in the total scope of impacts of such products. In the LCA literature, additives are hardly visible. Most case studies of products containing additives do not mention them. The reasons for this are unclear, but are at least partly due to the fact that information on additives is not included in standard LCA databases. This is true for both life cycle inventory (LCI) and life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) databases. Therefore, it is difficult to conclude whether or not additives indeed are important contributors to environmental impacts over the life cycle. 

In order to achieve that an environmental fate model is successfully applied in a screening level risk assessment and ultimately incorporated into the decisionmaking tools, the model should have computational efficiency and modest data input. Moreover, the model should incorporate all relevant compartments and all sources of contamination and should consider the most important mechanisms of fate and transport. Although spatial models describe the environment more accurately, such models are difficult to apply because they require a large amount of input data (e.g., detailed terrain parameters, meteorological data, turbulence characteristics and other related parameters). Therefore, MCMs are more practical, especially for long-term environmental impact evaluation, because of their modest data requirements and relatively simple yet comprehensive model structure. In addition, MCMs are also widely used for the comparative risk assessment of new and existing chemicals [28-33]. 

Often contrasted in conceptual terms, EIA and RA have a common ultimate goal— the rational reform of policy-making (Andrews 1990). Both assessment tools are intended to provide reasoned predictions of possible consequences of planned decisions to facilitate wiser choices among the alternatives. To link risk assessment and impact assessment paradigms one can suggest a definition of environmental impact as any change in the level of risk undergone by receptors of concern that are reasonably attributable to a proposed project (Demidova, 2002). 

Although the methodology of assessment methods can be criticized, it is essential that we have accurate tools at our disposal in order to make the correct decisions regarding the appropriate materials/processes to use. An important aspect of making any determination of the environmental impact of a process, or as a consequence of the use of a specific material, is the determination of where the boundaries of the analysis should lie. A simple diagram of the principle elements of an environmental impact analysis is shown in Figure 9.1. 

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