William G. Lowrie Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, United States.
Environ Sci Technol. 2011 Apr 1;45(7):3054-61. doi: 10.1021/es1025855. Epub 2011 Mar 1.
Although many regard it as the most important step of life cycle assessment, improvement analysis is given relatively little attention in the literature. Most available improvement approaches are highly subjective, and traditional LCA methods often do not account for resources other than fossil fuels. In this work exergy is evaluated as a thermodynamically rigorous way of identifying process improvement opportunities. As a case study, a novel process for producing titanium dioxide nanoparticles is considered. A traditional impact assessment, a first law energy analysis, and an exergy analysis are done at both the process and life cycle scales. The results indicate that exergy analysis provides insights not available via other methods, especially for identifying unit operations with the greatest potential for improvement. Exergetic resource accounting at the life cycle scale shows that other materials are at least as significant as fossil fuels for the production of TiO2 nanoparticles in this process.
尽管许多人认为它是生命周期评估中最重要的步骤，但改进分析在文献中却相对较少受到关注。大多数可用的改进方法都具有高度的主观性，并且传统的生命周期评估方法通常不考虑化石燃料以外的资源。在这项工作中，火用被评估为一种从热力学上识别过程改进机会的严格方法。作为案例研究，考虑了一种生产二氧化钛纳米粒子的新工艺。在过程和生命周期尺度上分别进行了传统的影响评估、第一定律能量分析和火用分析。结果表明，火用分析提供了其他方法无法提供的见解，特别是对于识别具有最大改进潜力的单元操作。生命周期尺度上火用资源核算表明，对于该工艺中 TiO2 纳米粒子的生产，其他材料至少与化石燃料一样重要。
