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Life cycle assessment in chemical industry – a review
Andreia Santos, Ana Barbosa-Póvoa and Ana Carvalho
This paper presents a review of research works where the Life
Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology has been applied to
assess environmental impacts of chemical processes. To
accomplish this goal, a total of 46 papers, published in English-
speaking peer reviewed journals from 2015 to 2019, were
reviewed. These papers have been analyzed in terms of the
most important decisions taken in LCA studies. These
decisions include the goal of the LCA study, the applied system
boundary, the functional unit used, the type of process
considered, the database and software utilized, the impact
categories considered, the LCIA method chosen and the type
of analyses conducted to interpret the results. Most of the
reviewed papers (73.9%) are comparative LCA studies
considering a cradle-to-gate system boundary and a functional
unit related with the mass of an input or output of the system
under study. Petrochemical production processes are the
focus of the majority (58.7%) of the LCA studies. SimaPro and
Ecoinvent are the most used LCA software and database,
respectively. Environmental impacts were mostly assessed
using ReCiPe and global warming is the most analyzed impact
category. Most reviewed papers (82.6%) focus on identifying
the hotspots of the studied system, while including sensitivity
and scenario analyses. This review shows that, although
significant work has been done in recent years in life cycle
assessment application to assess the environmental impacts of
chemical processes, there is still work to be done where the
selection of more impact categories and the inclusion of
uncertainty analysis are promptly crucial lines of research.
Address
Centre for Management Studies (CEG-IST), Instituto Superior Técnico,
University of Lisbon, Portugal
Corresponding author:
Santos, Andreia (anacarvalho@tecnico.ulisboa.pt)
Current Opinion in Chemical Engineering 2018, 26:139–147
This review comes from a themed issue on Energy, environment and
sustainability: sustainability modeling
Edited by Heriberto Cabezas
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coche.2019.09.009
2211-3398/ã 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
www.sciencedirect.com
Introduction
The chemical industry is responsible for the production of
a wide range of products which are derived from organic,
inorganic, biological, and synthetic sources manipulated
by a range of process operations. These products can be
divided into three main categories—commodity chemi-
cals, specialty chemicals, and consumer chemicals [1].
Although chemical products are of extreme importance
and can be found in almost every aspect of our lives, the
chemical industry has been accused of overexploitation of
natural resources, as well as, pollution of the environmen-
tal media (air, water and soil) [2]. It is, therefore, impor-
tant to consider the environmental impacts of the process
operations utilized by this industry to identify ways in
which these impacts might be reduced. One way of
quantifying these environmental impacts is through life
cycle assessment (LCA).
LCA is the most used methodology to calculate the
environmental impacts of a system. The term system
might refer to a product, service, process, or others [3].
The four steps involved in an LCA study are well docu-
mented in the ISO 14040-series [4]. The first step, Goal
and Scope Definition, consists of defining the main objec-
tive of the LCA study and characterizing the system to be
analyzed. The next step, Life Cycle Inventory (LCI),
consists of quantifying the inputs (e.g. raw materials and
electricity) and outputs (e.g. emissions and solid waste) of
the system. The third step of an LCA is Life Cycle
Impact Assessment (LCIA). In this step, the environmen-
tal impacts of the system under study are calculated by
converting the inventory collected in the previous step
into environmental impacts. The last step, called Results
Interpretation, consists of analyzing and interpreting the
results of the three previous steps [4].
The main goal of this literature review is to understand how
the LCA methodology has been applied in the chemical
industry to analyze the environmental impacts associated
with the production of commodity chemicals responsible for
most of the chemical industry sales [1]. This understanding
will allow to identify patterns between the reviewed studies
and consequently identify gaps in the literature. To the best
of the authors knowledge a similar review has not yet been
conducted. Similar studies exist but they usually have a much
narrower focus. For example, Chau et al. [5] reviewed studies
where life cycle assessment had been applied to evaluate the
environmental impacts of building construction while more
recently Maciel et al. [6] conducted a literature review of
environmental life cycle assessment studies on ionic liquids.
Current Opinion in Chemical Engineering 2019, 26:139–147
140 Energy, environment and sustainability: sustainability modeling
Research methodology
The methodology followed in this literature review consists
of four steps – Questions Formulation, Locating Studies,
Selection and Evaluation, and finally Analysis and Synthe-
sis [7]. Each of these steps is explained in detail below.
Step 1 – questions formulation
The focus of the review is established through well-
formulated questions. The main goal of this paper is to
answer the following research question: How has LCA been
applied in the chemical industry to analyze the environmental
impacts associated with the production of commodity chemicals?
The answer to this question is provided in the next
section of this paper.
Step 2 – locating studies
To locate relevant literature, ScienceDirect was the elec-
tronic database used and a structure keyword search was
conducted. The research keywords were defined by com-
bining Boolean logic operators with parenthesis: ‘life
cycle assessment’ AND ‘chemical process’. While the
keyword ‘chemical process’ was searched in the whole
body of the papers, the keyword ‘life cycle assessment’
was only searched in the title, abstract and author-
specified keywords of the papers to guarantee that the
focus of majority of the studies found is LCA application.
Other keywords might have been selected instead of ‘life
cycle assessment’ such as ‘life cycle analysis’ but the
former was selected because it is the term defined by
the ISO standards [4] and the most commonly used. The
last search was conducted in May 2019 and a period of five
years, from 2015 to 2019, was considered to include the
most recent research. A total of 253 papers were obtained
in this preliminary search of the database.
Step 3 – selection and evaluation
To assess the relevance of each study two major selection
criteria were used:
 Only research papers published in peer-reviewed jour-
nals were included;
 Research papers that do not focus on LCA application
or that do not consider commodity chemicals were
excluded.
On the basis the first and second criteria, 64 and
143 papers were respectively excluded resulting in a total
of 207 papers excluded out of 253 papers in the initial
sample. The final sample was composed of 46 papers that
will be analyzed in the following step.
Step 4 – analysis and synthesis
This step includes the analysis and synthesis of every
study comprised in the review considering the following
aspects:
Current Opinion in Chemical Engineering 2019, 26:139–147
 Goal — An LCA study can be classified as being stand-
alone or comparative. In a stand-alone study, life cycle
assessment is applied to only one system in order to
assess its environmental impacts, while in a compara-
tive LCA study, life cycle assessment is applied to two
or more systems and the environmental impacts of the
systems are applied for comparison;
 Functional unit — A quantitative reference for which
the inputs and outputs of the system under study are
related [3]. It can be classified according to the property
of the system it measures. For example, if the func-
tional unit of an LCA is 1 kg of final product then the
property being measured is mass;
 System boundary — Defines which parts of the life
cycle is under analysis [3]. There are four main system
boundaries—cradle-to-grave which considers the
entire life cycle from raw materials’ extraction to prod-
uct disposal and recycling; cradle-to-gate which con-
siders all steps from raw materials’ extraction to another
step in the life cycle usually product manufacturing;
gate-to-gate which only considers a single step in the
life cycle like product delivery or use; and gate-to-grave
which considers the last steps in the life cycle such as
use and product disposal [8];
 Commodity chemical — This category of chemical
products includes chemicals mainly sold within the
chemical industry and to other industries where they
are used to manufacture other products sold to the
public. For this reason, they are usually produced on a
very large scale. Commodity chemicals can be divided
into three main groups – petrochemicals (e.g. metha-
nol), polymers (e.g. polyethylene) and basic inorganics
(e.g. sodium hydroxide) [1];
 LCI database — The LCI step usually involves a large
amount of data which leads to the use of LCI databases
(e.g. Ecoinvent, Agro-footprint, and European LCI)
where some of the required data might be available;
 Software – There are several software in the market,
which allow to model the system under study, perform-
ing the LCA;
 LCIA method — The third step of an LCA can be done
using different LCIA methods (e.g. ReCiPe, CML, and
IMPACT 2002+). These methods use different impact
categories (e.g. climate change, eutrophication, and
human toxicity) and have different characterization
factors for the environmental impact assessment;
 Impact categories — Each LCIA method considers a
group of different impact categories (ICs). To compare
the reviewed papers in terms of ICs, the taxonomy
proposed by Carvalho et al. [9] will be used. In their
study, the authors organized the impact categories by
impact categorical groups (ICGs) and allocated each
ICG to a specific class — Ecological, Human Health,
and Resources;
 Results — The interpretation of results from an LCA
study may include the identification of the most critical
impact categories (IC) and/or the determination of
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 Life cycle assessment in chemical industry Santos, Barbosa-Póvoa and Carvalho 141

hotspots. By identifying the hotspots, LCA studies can
propose retrofitting actions that would minimize the
environmental impact and by identifying the most
critical impact categories the efficiency of such actions
can be assessed. Due to the large amount of data
required to conduct an LCA, it is important to under-
stand the impacts of uncertain parameters on the out-
comes of the LCA study. For this reason, ISO standards
[4] suggest that the last step of an LCA should consider
a sensitivity analysis, a scenario analysis, or other
approaches such as stochastic models to analyze the
uncertainty.
The results of this step are presented in the next section
of this paper and allow to answer the research question
previously formulated.
Results
Each of the aspects considered in the analysis of every
study comprised in the review can be allocated to one of
the four steps of an LCA, as follows.
Goal and scope definition
The synthesis of the 46 selected papers according to the
goal, system boundary, functional unit and the group of
commodity chemicals considered is presented in
Table 1. The majority (73.9%) of LCA studies applied
to the production of commodity chemicals are compara-
tive studies. Most of these studies focus on comparing
different production pathways as is the case of the study
developed by Zhao et al. [10] where several propylene
production routes were compared through life cycle pri-
mary energy demand and greenhouse gas (GHG) emis-
sions. Other comparisons include different raw materials
(e.g. fossil and bio-based polyethylene terephthalate
(PET) bottles [11]) and management solutions (e.g. differ-
ent solutions for food waste management [12]). Even most
of the stand-alone studies included some type of compari-
son usually through scenario analysis [13–15,16,17,18,19]
where different assumptions were tested, and their envi-
ronmental impacts compared.
Cradle-to-grate (from raw materials extraction to product
manufacturing) was the system boundary chosen by
82.6% of the reviewed studies. This is understandable
as the focus of most of these studies was to compare
different production pathways with a similar end use
phase. Cradle-to-grave was the system boundary defined
by three studies developed by Patel et al. [20] where the
sustainability of 2-Ethyl-1-hexanol production was ana-
lyzed; Kua and Lu [21] where the environmental impacts
for tempered glass and polycarbonate were evaluated;
and Ghannadzadeh [16] where avoidable key causes of
the environmental unsustainability of polyol ether pro-
duction were investigated. With a more restricted scope
are the studies that considered gate-to-gate as system
boundary. These include—the inherent safety and envi-
ronmental assessment of methanol production from nat-
ural gas at different production scales [22]; the evalua-
tion of different retrofit design alternatives for the
acetone chloroform separation process [23]; the assess-
ment of the potential life cycle environmental impacts
related to a novel protocol poly hydroxyalkanoates
extraction based on dimethyl carbonate in comparison
to the use of halogenated hydrocarbons [24]; the com-
parison of different management options for livestock
waste in terms of sustainability [25]; and the environ-
mental performance examination of the chemical
pretreatment process employed during lignocellulosic
conversion to ethanol [26].

Table 1

Goal, system boundary, functional unit and commodity chemicals considered in each of the 46 reviewed studies

Goal System boundary Functional unit Commodity chemicals References

Stand-alone Polymers [15,34]
Mass Petrochemicals [13,17,18,35]
Basic inorganics [36]
Cradle-to-gate Energy Petrochemicals [14,19]
Area Petrochemicals [31]
Amount of substance Petrochemicals [28]
Cradle-to-grave Mass Polymers [16]
Comparative Polymers [11,12,32,33,37–40]
Mass Petrochemicals [10,27,41,42,43,44,45,49–51,53,54]
Basic inorganics [46–48,52]
Cradle-to-gate Volume Petrochemicals [30]
Energy Petrochemicals [50,55]
Number Basic inorganics [29]
Polymers [24]
Gate-to-gate Mass Petrochemicals [22,23,26]
Basic inorganics [25]
Petrochemicals [21]
Cradle-to-grave Mass Polymers [20]

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142 Energy, environment and sustainability: sustainability modeling

Table 2 starch reclaimed from wastewater. Mohammed et al. [52]

Database and LCA software used in each of the 46 reviewed assessed the economic and environmental implications of
studies the conversion of phosphogypsum (a by-product from
Software Database References
phosphoric acid production) to useful resources such as
paper and fertilizer.
SimaPro Ecoinvent [12–15,18–20,26,30,
32–34,36,37,40,42,
43,47,49,51,52] Life cycle inventory
Agro-footprint [14,42] Table 2 presents a summary of the LCI databases and LCA
European LCI [26,47] software used in each of the 46 reviewed studies. SimaPro is
US LCI [13]
the most applied LCA software [56]. The majority of the
Australian LCI [47,52]
EU input output library [26] LCA studies reviewed resorted to the Ecoinvent database
Danish input output library [26] [57] to collect the LCI of the system under study. Due to
N/A [23] the complexity of the case studies used in the studies
GaBi Ecoinvent [11,24,35,53] reviewed and the fact that some of them require the use
GaBi [24,35,48,55]
US LCI [11]
of different databases with a local geographical scope,
PlasticsEurope [11] several of these studies use more than one database
OpenLCA Ecoinvent [16,17,38] [11,13,14,16,17,21,24,26,27,35,42,47,52,54].
US LCI [16,17]
ProBas [46]
Databases are not the only source of data in the inventory
Umberto Ecoinvent [28]
N/A Ecoinvent [21,25,27,45,54] collection step of an LCA. Several of the reviewed studies
Agro-footprint [54] [14,18,20,23,24,30–35,36,39,41,42,44,45,49,53] used
GaBi [21] simulation to estimate missing inventory data using
Inventory of carbon and energy [21] mostly the Chemical Process Simulation (CPS) software
Chinese reference life cycle [27]
JLCA-LCA [39]
Aspen PlusTM and Aspen HYSYSTM by Aspentech.
GEMIS [50] Beside process simulation, some studies used information
gathered from the literature [30,44,52], industry data
[44,51], experimental tests [19,34,43], and site investiga-
tion [25,29,44].
Functional units related with mass (e.g. 1 ton olefins [27])
are the most common in LCA studies applied to the Life cycle impact assessment
production of commodity chemicals, followed by energy The synthesis of the 46 selected papers according to the
(e.g. 1 MJ of bioethanol produced [14]). Other functional impact categorical groups that each of them considers is
units found include 1 mol of syngas produced in a study presented in Table 3 where the taxonomy proposed by
investigating the environmental profile of plasma assisted Carvalho et al. [9] is used. The most investigated impact
methane reforming for the production of synthesis gas categorical group is global warming, which was consid-
[28]; 10 000 eggs production in a poultry farm in a study ered in 93.5% of the reviewed studies. The most popular
where the greenhouse gas emissions of different poultry impact categorical groups belong to the ecological class.
litter management techniques including the production From the other two classes, the most investigated impact
of bio-fertilizer were estimated [29]; 1000 L bioethanol categorical group is human toxicity for the human health
produced [30]; and 1 ha of arundo donax [31] in studies class and non-renewable, fossil for the resources class. A
where the environmental impacts of bioethanol produc- small number of studies does not convert the LCI into
tion from cassava, cane molasses, and rice straw [30], and environmental impacts. These include the study con-
arundo donax [31] where assessed. ducted by Xiang et al. [27] where the energy consumption
and GHG emissions of olefins production were analyzed;
Petrochemicals are the most studied commodity chemi- the study conducted by Zhao et al. [44] where the life
cals followed by polymers. However, the academia inter- cycle CO2 emissions of different ethylene production
est in the latter seems to be decreasing since only three routes were compared; and the study conducted by
studies focusing on polymers production have been pub- Brusca et al. [31] where bioethanol production was ana-
lished after 2017 [16,32,33]. Basic inorganics have been lyzed, from an energetic point of view, by means of a Life
the least studied group of commodity chemicals. Cycle Energy Analysis.

Another aspect revealed by the analysis of the 46 LCA
studies is the increasing interest in investigating the use
of reclaimed materials or by-products to produce com-
modity chemicals to mitigate environmental impacts. For
example, Broeren et al. [37] quantified the environmental
impacts of starch plastics produced from virgin starch and
Besides environmental impacts, two of the LCA studies
reviewed consider also economic and social impacts in
their assessments. Lijo et al. [25] used the Analytic
Hierarchy Process and 12 indicators (four for each sus-
tainability dimension) to compare the performance of
different management options for livestock waste in

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 Life cycle assessment in chemical industry Santos, Barbosa-Póvoa and Carvalho 143

Table 3

Impact categorical groups considered in each of the 46 reviewed studies.

Class Impact Categorical Group References

Ecological Acidification [11,12,14,15,18,19,21,23,24,25,26,28,30]
[33,35,36,38,42,43,45–49,51,55]
Ecotoxicity [11,14,15,21,23,24,26,30,32,33,35,36,38]
[40,42,43,45,48,49,51,54,55]
Eutrophication [11–15,18,19,21–24,25,26,28,30]
[33,35,36,37,38,40,42,43,45–49]
[51,52,54,55]
Extinction of species [23]
Global warming [10–15,18–24]
[25,26–30,32–35,36,37,38]
[39,40–42,43,44–51]
[52,53,54,55]
Oxygen consumption [48]
Ozone depletion [11,14,15,18,23,24,28,32,33,35,36,38,42]
[43,45,48,49,51,55]
Particulate matter [15,19,23,24,30,33,36,40,43,51]
Photochemical oxidation [11,14,15,18,19,23,24,25,26,28,30,35,38]
[36,42,43,45,48,49,51,55]
Waste [23,47,48,52]
Waste heat [13]
Human health Carcinogenic [23,24,35,48,54]
Human health [11]
Human toxicity [14,15,21–23,28,30,32,33,36,38,42,43]
[45,49,51,55]
Ionising radiation [15,23,24,36,43,51]
Life expectancy [23]
Morbidity [23]
Non carcinogenic [23,24,35,54]
Nuisance [23]
Respiratory effects [23,35]
Resources Abiotic resources [14,42,45,49,55]
Crop production capacity [23]
Energy [10,23,27,48]
Fish and meat production [23]
Land use [15,23,32,33,36,37,43,51,54]
Mineral resources [15,23,24,35,36,40,43,46,51]
Natural resources [23]
Non renewable energy [23,37]
Non renewable, fossil [11,13,15,19,23,25,30,32,33,35,36,40,43]
[46,51,53]
Raw material consumption [48]
Renewable energy [35,40]
Resources consumption [23]
Water [15,23,24,25,32,33,47,48,51,52]
Wood production [23]

Cyprus including the production of organic fertilizer.
Mohammed et al. [52] used the Economic Analyser
software in Aspen Plus v8.4 for the economic analysis,
four environmental impacts (water use, global warming
potential, eutrophication potential, and solid waste), and
three social indicators (employment opportunity, inter-
generational social equity, and avoided land use) to assess
the sustainability of different alternative for the conver-
sion of phosphogypsum.
The most popular LCIA method utilized to calculate the
environmental impacts is ReCiPe, which was used in
39.1% of the reviewed studies [11,15,16,17,19,22,23,
25,30,32,33,36,37,43,46,49,51,54]. The second most
popular LCIA method is CML used in 26.1% of the
reviewed studies [12,14,18,21,26,28,37,38,42,45,53,55].
Four studies [24,35,40,54] used the ILCD midpoint
method and two [23,36] used the IMPACT2002+. Other
LCIA intended methods (i.e. methods that allow users to
assess the environmental impact from different points of
view [9]) were considered in only one of the reviewed
studies. These include TRACI [11], Eco-Indicator 99,
Ecological Scarcity, EDIP, and EPS [23]. In some of the
review studies, single issue LCIA methods were chosen.
These are methods that only allow users to assess the
environmental impact from a single point of view [9] and

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144 Energy, environment and sustainability: sustainability modeling
Table 4
Analyses conducted in each of the 46 reviewed studies.
Analysis
Hotspot Identification
Most critical IC
Sensitivity analysis
Scenario analysis
Uncertainty analysis
include IPCC [10,13,20,29,34,37,39,41,54] which deals with
global warming; USEtox [54] which quantifies only the
toxicity (ecosystems and human health); CED (Cumulative
Energy Demand) [12,13,18,19,20,34,37,54] which measures
the amount of energy involved in a system [58]; and CExD
(Cumulative Exergy Demand) [16,17] which measures the
depletion of exergy linked with the material conversion from
its natural state to products [59]. Some of the reviewed studies
used more than one LCIA method to assess different envi-
ronmental impacts [11–13,16,17,18–20,23,34,36,37,54].
Several of the LCA studies reviewed combined more than
one LCIA method but only one LCA study [36] com-
pared the results of using different LCIA methods (i.e.
IMPACT2002+ and ReCiPe) to assess the environmental
impacts of oxygen-18 production.
Results interpretation
Table 4 presents a summary of the analyses conducted in
each of the 46 reviewed studies. The majority (82.6%)
of LCA studies reviewed consider hotspots identifica-
tion while very few identify the impact categories
responsible for most of the environmental impacts.
Because different impact categories are expressed
using different units, to identify the most critical
impact categories it is necessary to normalize the results
so these could be adjusted to have common dimensions.
The normalized results are them analyzed through a
Pareto analysis, for example, and the most critical
impact categories identified.
In terms of considering the influence that uncertainty has on
the LCA results, most of the reviewed studies consider a
sensitivity (50%) or scenario analysis (52.2%). There are few
studies considering a deeper uncertainty analysis by apply-
ing a stochastic model, through Monte Carlo simulation,
[60–62]. Only 10 of the reviewed studies do not analyze the
uncertainty associated with the LCA results neither through
sensitivity or scenarios analyses nor through stochastic mod-
els [20,26,31,32,35,39,40,45,51,52].
Two studies that combine the identification of hot-
spots and most critical impact categories with uncer-
tainty analysis were conducted by Ghannadzadeh
Current Opinion in Chemical Engineering 2019, 26:139–147
References
[10–15,16,17,18,19,21,24,27–33]
[35,36,37–42,43,44–48,50,51,52,53,54,55]
[12,15,16,17,23,36,43,48,51]
[10–15,18,19,21,22,23,25,28–30,34,36,37,41,42]
[48,50,54,55]
[11–15,16,17,18,19,24,27,29,30,33,37,38,43,44,46]
[48,49,50,53,55]
[15,16,17,19,34,47]
[16,17]. In these studies, an exergy-aided LCA
was conducted to assess the environmental sustainabil-
ity of a polyol ether [16] and ethylene dichloride–
vinylchloride [17] production process. After analyzing
the results, Ghannadzadeh [16,17] concluded that
the main source of the damage to the environment was
the power generation unit. On the basis of this knowl-
edge, scenarios were defined where this unit has been
undergone the retrofitting. Because power generation
was pinpointed as the main source of environmental
impacts, Ghannadzadeh [16,17] also conducted a
Monte Carlo simulation to analyze the sensitivity of
the LCA results to the variation of power demand
considering the production process before and after
the retrofitting action.
Research opportunities
Although significant work has been done in recent years
in life cycle assessment application to assess the environ-
mental impacts of commodity chemicals production, sev-
eral research opportunities were identified:
 Cradle-to-gate has been the most used system bound-
ary. Although most LCA studies focus on comparing
different production pathways with a similar end use
phase, a broader boundary such as cradle-to-grave
should be explored when the disposal phase is different
for each of the alternatives compared. Furthermore,
only through a cradle-to-grave boundary can the envi-
ronmental impacts associated with the whole life cycle
of commodity chemicals be fully assessed;
 Future LCA studies should focus more on polymers
and basic inorganics production since, together, the
chemicals belonging to these groups are responsible
for a higher percentage of sales in the chemical industry
than petrochemicals [1];
 The most popular environmental impacts assessed are
related to the effects of emissions on ecosystems. An
effort should be made by future LCA studies to also
consider impact categories related to the effects of
emissions on human health and the effects of raw
materials’ extraction. Furthermore, the inclusion of
economic and social indicators would give these studies
a much more inclusive sustainability analysis;
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 Life cycle assessment in chemical industry Santos, Barbosa-Póvoa and Carvalho 145
 Future studies should not only identify hotspots but
also the most critical impact categories. By focusing on
the environmental impacts with greater contribution
and identifying the causes of these impacts, this
approach will allow for better suggestion of improve-
ment to be made;
 Lastly, future LCA studies should always include an
uncertainty analysis using a stochastic approach to
better characterize the uncertainties of LCA results.
Conclusion
This paper presented a literature review focusing on LCA
application to analyze the environmental impacts associ-
ated with the production of commodity chemicals.
Through the analysis of 46 research papers, key issues
were identified and cognizance that is not obvious from
reading the individual studies was developed. Although
only papers focusing on LCA application to analyze the
environmental impacts associated with the production of
commodity chemicals where included in this review, the
search conducted to find these papers revealed other
studies that should be analyzed. These include papers
where life cycle assessment was applied to assess the
environmental impacts associated with the production of
speciality and consumer chemicals, and other products
manufactured by other industries closely related with the
chemical industry such as the textile, paper, and pharma-
ceutical industries. Another significant group of studies
that should be reviewed considers the application of LCA
to assess the environmental impacts of processes used in
end-of-life facilities to minimize the release of products
harmful to the environment or to recover valuable mate-
rials that can be reused to produce value-added products.
Furthermore, a more comprehensive literature review
that considers more databases is also necessary as consid-
ering only one database may result in the exclusion of
relevant literature.
Conflict of interest statement
Nothing declared.
Acknowledgement
The authors grateful acknowledge PhD grant SFRH/BD/134479/2017.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary material related to this article can be
found, in the online version, at doi:https://doi.org/10.
1016/j.coche.2019.09.009.
References and recommended reading
Papers of particular interest, published within the period of review,
have been highlighted as:
 of special interest
 of outstanding interest
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Current Opinion in Chemical Engineering 2019, 26:139–147
146 Energy, environment and sustainability: sustainability modeling
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ethylene dichloride–vinylchloride production process was assessed. The
same conclusions were obtained – the scenario where biomass alone
provides enough energy for electricity is the most sustainable alternative
while the most unsustainable choice is the scenario where natural gas and
alone provides enough energy for electricity.
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Current Opinion in Chemical Engineering 2019, 26:139–147
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34. Tecchio Paolo, Freni Pierluigi, Benedetti Bruno De,
Fenouillot Françoise: Ex-ante life cycle assessment approach
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ment method. The authors concluded that electricity consumption is the
most important hotspot of the entire product system. Furthermore,
sensitivity analysis was conducted that showed that changing life cycle
impact assessment method from ReCiPe to IMPACT 2002+ had no
significant effect on acquired results and therefore results were confident.
37. Broeren Martijn LM, Kuling Lody, Worrell Ernst, Li Shen:
Environmental impact assessment of six starch plastics
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38. Passuello Ana, Rodrı́guez Erich D, Hirt Eduardo, Longhi Márlon,
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of the potential improvement in the environmental footprint of
geopolymers using waste-derived activators. J Clean Prod
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39. Kikuchi Yasunori, Oshita Yuko, Mayumi Kazuya, Hirao Masahiko:
Greenhouse gas emissions and socioeconomic effects of
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40. Grande Carlos A, Blom Richard, Spjelkavik Aud, Moreau Valentine,
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14:11-18.
41. Qin Zhen, Zhai Guofu, Wu Xiaomei, Yu Yunsong, Zhang Zaoxiao:
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the hierarchical attribution management and life cycle
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42. Alonso-Farinãs Bernabé, Gallego-Schmid Alejandro, Haro Pedro,
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www.sciencedirect.com
 Life cycle assessment in chemical industry Santos, Barbosa-Póvoa and Carvalho 147
the most polluting scenario. On the other hand, the scenario where bread
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and AlCl3 as the catalyst is the most environmentally favorable option due
to the use of a less polluting catalyst (AlCl3) and co-solvent (acetone).
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characteristics of bio-based chemicals are often missing; 3) in terms of
toxicity impacts, the reviewed methods are often crude and not accurate
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