Effects on Life Cycle Assessment - Scale up of processes

Abstract

Taking processes under development into consideration, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis result of pilot plants, mini plants or laboratory experiments do not necessarily represent the environmental burdens which would be caused by a large scale plant (mass production). Especially for comparative LCA studies there is a necessity to analyse, whether there are influences on environmental burdens due to scale up. There are effects which should be taken into consideration for such scale-up prognosis in LCA. This paper reports on an innovative systematic procedure, which enables the industry to make prognosis for production scale plant based on LCA of pilot processes.