Green life cycle assessment

The whole topic of Life Cycle Assessment is dealt with in detail in Chapter 7. However, there are some important points about LCA as it relates to green product design. It is important to be able to compare different solutions, it is also important to be aware of the limitations of LCA. These include ... 

Saiz, S., Kennedy, C., Bass, B. and Pressnail, K. (2006) Comparative life cycle assessment of standard and green roofs. Environ. Sci. Technol., 40, 4312. 

The development of green Foodomics runs parallel to the improvement and design of techniques able to assess the environmental impact of the different protocols/processes/operations involved. At present several techniques can be found in the literature to test, for instance, the impact of analytical chemistry methods (such as the Greeness profile, the HPLC-EAT, or the Analytical Eco-Scale) and the environmental impacts associated with a product or process, over its entire life cycle (such as Life Cycle Assessment). Nevertheless, techniques able to provide a more holistic view of the different aspects... 

Anastas PT, Lankey RL (2000) Life cycle assessment and green chemistry the yin and yang of industrial ecology. Green Chem 2(6) 289-295... 

The environmental issues are providing an exciting opportunity for R D to make a significant contribution, not only to the health of the local community but also the financial health of the company. Some of the major areas for study by R D are catalytic solutions, solvent replacement, novel reactors, such as microreactors, as well as considering the product design carrying out life cycle assessments and the use of alternative feedstocks. This area has become known as Green Chemistry [D-6]. 

Life-cycle assessment is an important green engineering tool for analyzing processes and products. This tool is currently being used by... 

Safety Considerations, Life Cycle Assessment and Green Metrics... 

Figure 1.2 Life cycle assessment of the treatment options (incineration and distillation) for 26 common laboratory solvents. [Reprinted with permission from Green Chem., 2007, 9, 927-934. Copyright 2007 The Royal Society of Chemistry.]...

Why is Life Cycle Assessment important 13) How can analytical techniques be used to follow the course of a reaction 14) What is the Toxics Release Inventory 15) What are green metrics Are mass and energy good enough indicators of environmental impact 16)... 

Munoz Ortiz, I. (2006) Life cycle assessment as a tool for green chemistry application to different advanced oxidation processes for wastewater treatment,... 

A life cycle assessment study, carried out by Sombekke et al. (1997), compared conventional filtration and GAC with NF. The NF performed better in health and quality aspects and worse in environmental impact, due to concentrate treatment and energy requirements. NF could outperform conventional treatment if green energy could be used. 

Examples of commercial applications are scarce up to now (cf Section 5.3 use of ILs has been considered for a series of specific questions). The scaling-up of IL syntliesis procedures is normally without problems however, the commercialization and/or transport of the ionic liquids raise the question of their registration (EINECS for Europe or equivalents see Section 5.4). Disposal and recycle of ILs are important concerns and have to be considered on a case-by-case basis. And Ionic liquids are not always green - as has been stated by Rogers et al. [42], From the standpoint of life cycle assessment and hazard analysis ILs are clearly not recommendable for industrial use, especially if those with PFg or BF4 as anions are concerned. And it is obviously no wonder that recent new developments such as BMIM octylsulfate have been emphasized as even greener ionic liquids [43],... 

Suryanarayana C. Mechanical alloying and miUing. Prog Mater Sci 2001 46 1-184. Schneider F, Szuppa T, Stolle A, Ondruschka B, Hopf H. Energetic assessment of the Suzuki-Miyaura reaction a curtate life cycle assessment as an easily understandable and applicable tool for reaction optimization. Green Chem 2009 11 1894-9. 

Greater emphasis on life cycle assessment beyond elementary discussions about atom economy this is carried out in the Queen s University course and at UTSC in 2013 using an in-house automated Microsoft Excel spreadsheet based on a penalty-point algorithm developed by Andraos in collaboration with the Green Chemistry Initiative at the University of Toronto. This student group will be discussed in the next section. 

The authors highlighted the importance of metrics in the subject of green chemistry by pointing out that (a) a set of metrics should be developed to address all 12 green chemistry principles, (b) such a set of metrics should be easy to apply, (c) the metrics should measure progress as well as point chemists in the green direction, (d) the metrics should inform and provide momentum for both chemists and corporate managers, and (e) sustainability metrics are valuable since they focus on life cycle assessment and are thus better able to capture a broad evaluation of sustainability. 

Life cycle assessment Risk and nanotoxicology Green chemistry (sustainability) metrics Consumer protection... 

Mass index (MI) is defined as the total mass used in a process/process step divided by the mass of product and it is approximately the E-factor plus one. A software package, the Environmental Assessment Tool for Organic Syntheses (EATOS), has been designed to calculate some of these metrics. More elaborate assessments such as life cycle assessment (LCA), could be performed, but this is also beyond the scope of this chapter. Our objective is to provide a preliminary assessment for the community to determine if further development of any guanidine organocatalysis is appropriate for use in green chemistry. 

Tabone MD, Cregg JJ, Beckman EJ, Landis AE. Sustainability metrics life cycle assessment and green design in polymers. Environ Sci Technol 2010 44 (21) 8264-8269. 

The chapter demonstrates that in spite of the incompatibility between hydrophilic natural fibres and hydrophobic polymeric matrices, the properties of natural fibre composites can be enhanced through chemical modifications. The chemical treatments have therefore played a key role in the increased applications of natural fibre composites in the automotive sector. Recent work has also shown that if some of the drawbacks of natural fibres can be adequately addressed, these materials can easily replace glass fibres in many applications. The chapter has also shown that there have been attempts to use natural fibre composites in structural applications, an area which has been hitherto the reserve of synthetic fibres like glass and aramid. The use of polymer nanocomposites in applications of natural fibre-reinforced composites, though at infancy, may provide means to address these efficiencies. Evidence-based life-cycle assessment of natural fibre-reinforced composites is required to build confidence in the green composites applications in automotive sector. 

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