Loughborough University
Browse
PLC LCA Article_Clean.pdf (519.36 kB)

Life cycle assessments of bio-based sustainable polylimonene carbonate production processes

Download (519.36 kB)
journal contribution
posted on 2018-12-05, 15:13 authored by Dongda Zhang, Ehecatl Antonio del Rio-Chanona, Jonathan WagnerJonathan Wagner, Nilay Shah
Biomass is a promising feedstock for the production of sustainable biopolymers, which could offer a significant reduction of the adverse environmental impacts associated with conventional petroleum-based polymers. To further evaluate their potential, this study investigated the environmental impacts associated with the production of the newly proposed biopolymer polylimonene carbonate. Different feedstocks (citrus waste and microalgae) were selected and a conceptual process design from limonene oxidation to polymer synthesis was completed. Using life cycle assessment, the potential for energy integration and the contributions of individual process sections on the overall process environmental impacts were thoroughly analysed. The results showed, that sustainable polylimonene carbonate synthesis was limited by the use of tert-butyl hydroperoxide as the limonene oxidation agent and consequently, a more environmentally-friendly and energy-efficient limonene oxidation method should be developed. Based on the economic analysis, the polymer cost was estimated to range from $1.36 to $1.51 kg−1, comparable to the costs of petrol-based polystyrene ($1.2 to $1.6 kg−1). Moreover, this study found that both feedstock selection and the biowaste treatment method have significant effects on the process environmental impacts, and a carbon negative process was achieved when applying the waste biomass for electricity generation. Therefore, it was concluded that future process designs should combine polymer production with the co-generation of energy from waste biomass.

Funding

This research is supported by the EPSRC project under grant EP/L017393/1, “Sustainable Polymers”.

History

School

  • Aeronautical, Automotive, Chemical and Materials Engineering

Department

  • Chemical Engineering

Published in

Sustainable Production and Consumption

Volume

14

Pages

152 - 160

Citation

ZHANG, D. ... et al, 2018. Life cycle assessments of bio-based sustainable polylimonene carbonate production processes. Sustainable Production and Consumption, 14, pp.152-160.

Publisher

Elsevier © Institution of Chemical Engineers

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Acceptance date

2018-03-05

Publication date

2018-03-12

Notes

This paper was published in the journal Sustainable Production and Consumption and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spc.2018.03.001.

ISSN

2352-5509

Language

  • en