Life cycle assesment (LCA)

Process-based LCA will be used to support decision about large-scale implementation of Plastics2Olefins systems, taking all relevant categories of impacts and all relevant life cycle stages into account. ISO standards and ILCD recommendations will be followed, considering specific recommendations about modelling waste management systems[1]

[1] Laurent, A., et.al. 2014. Review of LCA studies of solid waste management systems – Part II: Methodological guidance for a better practice. Waste Management 34(3): 589–606.

The system boundaries will include collection of plastic waste, pyrolysis and purification steps, to avoided extraction fossil resources from (crude oil, hard coal) through the use of gas and pyrolysis oil as feedstock for steam cracker, and the use of char as source of heat in the pre-calcination step of the cement production.

Comparisons will be made with alternative waste management systems for mixed plastic waste, like incineration. Unit process inventories for the background system will mainly be taken from databases attached to the LCA modelling software (i.e., SimaPro). Life cycle impact assessment will rely on a suite of all relevant spatially differentiated life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods selected from two recent methodologies (i.e., LC-IMPACT and IMPACT World+).