The desalination sector adopts Minimal Liquid Discharge (MLD) systems to become more circular, reduce brine discharge and enhance water recovery, which transforms them to multifunctional systems. This multifunctionality requires a methodologically consistent and goal-aligned approach to environmental impact assessment that recognises how different modelling choices are connected with specific decision contexts. A criterion LCA-based framework aligned with the ISO 14044 hierarchy and tailored specifically to desalination has been developed. It guides the selection of allocation approaches based on system characteristics, integration level, and assessment objectives and is applied to assess an MLD system which co-produces desalinated water, sodium chloride, magnesium hydroxide, calcium hydroxide, sodium sulphate and hydrochloric acid. Multifunctionality was handled with system expansion and partitioning (physical and economic) approaches, resulting in different functional units. For physical and economic partitioning, the MLD system is modelled from a process and system perspective. The results indicate that the MLD system has larger environmental benefits than the reference system with system expansion. When physical and economic partitioning under different perspectives are applied, they result in different environmental burdens per co-product. The MLD system performs better than the reference system (0.005 kg CO₂/kg desalinated water) only when process economic partitioning (0.003 kg CO₂/kg desalinated water) is applied. Whereas, the rest co-products perform better than reference products for all partitioning approaches applied. Our results highlight the potential of brine as a secondary source of products. This study underscores the importance of selecting appropriate allocation approaches, contributing to sustainable practices in the desalination sector.

The production of capital goods is often ignored in the life cycle inventory phase of life cycle assessment studies. In this study, we investigated whether capital goods production, i.e., manufacturing of capital equipment and construction of infrastructure, and operation affect the results of the social life cycle assessment (S-LCA), using a case study of a desalination plant with multiple co-products in Lampedusa, Italy. The assessment was conducted using the PSILCA database to evaluate 20 impact subcategories and four stakeholder categories: Workers, Value chain actors, Society and Local community. Monetary data were collected for the manufacturing of equipment, labor and miscellaneous work during plant construction, working hours of employees during operation, consumed electricity and chemicals, and recovered materials during operation. Furthermore, multi-functionality was addressed through substitution, system expansion, and economic allocation to examine how these approaches affected the results. The functional unit was 1 m³ industrial water. Equipment manufacturing and plant construction contributed up to 15% to stakeholder categories and between 2% and 75% to impact subcategories of the substitution approach, and up to 51% for impact subcategories of system expansion and economic allocation. Equipment manufacturing and plant construction contributed to a high extent to “Health and safety” (of Workers), “Discrimination” and “Local employment” due to the construction and electrical sectors. Credits in substitution lead to a lower contribution of the operational stage and negative societal impact values. If S-LCA practitioners must limit the considered impact subcategories, for generic or site-specific analysis, the “Health and safety” (Workers), “Local employment”, and “Fair salary” should be investigated.

The sustainable supply of water is crucial, especially on islands where water is scarce. Our study applied the social life cycle assessment (S-LCA), under the organizational approach, to assess industrial water production on the island of Lampedusa, Italy. A novel plant for industrial water production considering a circular concept was compared with the existing linear production plant based on reverse osmosis. An online survey, brief literature review and generic analysis were conducted to prioritize impact subcategories selection for site-specific analysis that regarded six organizations in the system boundaries. These subcategories were Local employment, Access to material resources, Promoting social responsibility, End-of-life responsibility, Health and safety (Workers), and Public commitment to sustainability issues. The social performance of organizations involved was assessed based on equal weighting and weighting with cost values. The generic analysis showed that wastewater treatment in Italy is underdeveloped, and water scarcity can become a serious problem in the future. The site-specific analysis based on equal weighting showed that the novel water plant results in improving social performance for all considered impact subcategories by 88 % to 91 % due to co-production when compared with the existing plant. Even increasing impacts allocation to industrial water production social benefits are still expected due to co-production. The type of weighting based on cost values showed that two organizations are the main contributors to the social performance of the novel system, and improving their corporate conduct can result in improving impacts up to 25 %, such as Public commitment to sustainability issues. To conclude, the novel plan does provide social benefits but mainly due to co-production, thus, it should be investigated more how to apply the S-LCA to linear production systems as they become more circular.

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a powerful tool for achieving sustainability. Traditional LCAs analyze well defined and developed industrial systems, but recent developments of LCA focus on analyzing emerging technologies which are not yet optimized with respect to energy and materials. Therefore, LCA results of ex-ante applications can be very different from ex-post applications for the same system. The purpose of this study is to show the different effects of data scales on LCA results regarding global warming, fine particulate matter formation, terrestrial acidification and freshwater eutrophication potentials. For this purpose torrefaction technology was selected as the case study and assessed based on bench scale data, lab scale data, data derived from process simulations, pilot scale data and commercial scale data. Considered environmental impacts were global warming, fine particulate matter formation, terrestrial acidification and freshwater eutrophication. Results showed that process efficiencies improved significantly between the bench scale system and systems with higher technology readiness levels (TRLs), such as pilot, process simulations and commercial scale systems. Furthermore, process simulations result in scores closer to commercial scale regarding all considered environmental impacts. However, if LCA practitioners focus only on global warming impact, then pilot scale is also a good alternative. Finally, due to torrefaction technology being relatively simple in terms of raw materials input, we suggest more complex chemical systems to be assessed with LCA in various TRLs.

The largest wine producers globally are located in Southern Europe and climate is a major factor in wine production. The European Union aims to complement the consumer's choice for wine with information about environmental sustainability. The carbon footprint is a worldwide-standardized indicator that both wine producers and consumers perceive as the most important environmental indicator. So far, environmental life cycle assessment studies show variability in the system boundaries design and functional unit selection, and review papers do not include life cycle inventory data, and consider vineyards in various locations worldwide. This study aimed to investigate what are the key factors affecting the carbon footprint of red and white wine production in South European countries with the same climatic conditions, and benchmark both wine types. The results showed that the carbon footprints of white and red wines are comparable. The average carbon footprints were 1.02, 1.25, and 1.62 CO₂ eq. bottle of wine ⁻¹ for organic red wine, conventional red wine, and conventional white wine, respectively. The viticulture, winemaking, and packaging stages affect greatly the carbon footprint. Diesel consumption at the viticulture stage, electricity consumption at the viticulture and winemaking stages, and glass production at the packaging stage are the largest contributors to the carbon footprint. Wine consumption stage was omitted from most studies, even though it can increase the carbon footprint by 5%. Our results suggest that consumers should choose (conventional or organic) red wine that is produced locally.

Although the energy transition results in decreased use of coal for power production, hard coal extraction will continue due to its importance in steel production and coal mine wastewater will continue generating after mines closure. The coal mining sector produces wastewater which results in environmental burdens and often contains valuable materials that can be treated to eliminate effluent discharge and recover contained materials. The aim of this study is to determine whether the implementation of a novel wastewater treatment technique in an existing coal wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) can improve both environmental performance and resource recovery potential. Our study assesses for the first time the environmental performance of the WWTP of Dębieńsko at the Upper Silesian Coal Basin, in Poland because coal mine effluents need to be treated to eliminate current environmental impacts on surface water bodies (rivers). The existing wastewater treatment system comprises reverse osmosis, evaporation and crystallization technologies. In the case of the novel ZERO BRINE technique, lab performance data is scaled-up and used for nanofiltration, reverse osmosis, electrodialysis and crystallization technologies. The environmental impacts analysis is performed with life cycle assessment (LCA) by considering mid-point impact categories (climate change, terrestrial acidification and fossil resource scarcity) and end-point damages (human health, ecosystems and resources). The functional unit is 1 m³ of coal mine wastewater input and a scenario is developed where the plant functionality concerns salt production. Results show that the implementation of the ZERO BRINE technique can improve the environmental performance of the WWTP for all considered impact categories due to a reduction in electricity consumption by 13% in the entire plant. Climate change, acidification, fossil resources scarcity, human health, ecosystems, and resources were improved by 16%, 13%, 12%, 25%, 21% and 13%, respectively. A sensitivity analysis is performed on the electricity consumption of electrodialysis which shows an additional improvement by 7% on all impacts. The ZERO BRINE technique produces both water and different types of salts. In this case, the multi-functionality of the system is addressed through substitution, while sensitivity analyses are carried out using mass and economic allocation methods.

Industrial agriculture results in environmental burdens due to the overuse of fertilizers and pesticides. Fungicides is a class of pesticides whose application contributes (among others) to human toxicity and ecotoxicity. The European Union aims to increase organic agriculture. For this reason, this work aims to analyze climate change, freshwater ecotoxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity, human toxicity, (terrestrial) acidification, and freshwater eutrophication impacts of fungicides and cal-culate expected benefits to human health (per European citizen) and ecosystem quality (terrestrial) with life cycle assessment (LCA) during crop production. The Scopus database was searched for LCA studies that considered the application of fungicides to specific crops. The analysis shows how many systemic and contact fungicides were considered by LCA studies and what was the applied dosage. Furthermore, it shows that fungicides highly contribute to freshwater ecotoxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity, human toxicity, and freshwater eutrophication for fruits and vegetables, but to a low extent compared to all considered environmental impacts in the case of cereals and rapeseed. Expected benefits to human health and ecosystem quality after fungicides elimination are greater for fruits and vegetables, ranging between 0 to 47 min per European citizen in a year and 0 to 90 species per year, respectively.

MSocial Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) uses a life cycle perspective to assess social impacts of products, and the S-LCA guidelines describe developing the system boundaries based on a factory-level perspective. However, such a perspective may exclude stakeholders with a negative social performance which are cooperating with a factory but are not directly involved with the product under study, and it can result in a step back on corporate social responsibility (CSR). Our study aimed to align S-LCA with the CSR concept. Therefore, we designed a case study for the manufacturing sector in which we practiced expanding the system boundaries of S-LCA. Our results showed larger social risks after expanding the system boundaries due to subsidiary and supplier companies located in countries with less strict regulations than the Netherlands, which is where the main organizations and parent company existed. We conclude that system boundaries expansion can result in more complete picture of the involved organizations, and lead practitioners to approach S-LCA with the goal of improving social conditions and identify companies which deserve excellent or poor social scores. Its usefulness is mostly expected when S-LCA practitioners aim to identify social hotspots in supply chains in socially sensitive markets.

Technological developments are opening new avenues to facilitate the circular economy through resource recovery from industrial wastewater. This paper presents the use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) in the development of technology solutions for the treatment of brine wastewater and recovery of by-products. Four industrial case studies are assessed that apply different innovative technology configurations, to treat the brines and recover the water, salts and mineral compounds. The assessment focusses on identifying hotspots and potential design improvements for the four case studies. In addition, the development of a unified approach for prospective LCA and LCC is illustrated to promote robustness and consistency in the analysis of the four systems. The analysis reveals that the impact and cost of treatment is highly dependent on the wastewater composition. Critically, whether the recovery of compounds and deionised water can counteract the impact and cost of the treatment systems. The early analysis suggests that this is possible for two of the cases studies. Estimates of the GHG emissions for the initial system analysis, range from 10 to 17 kg CO₂e/m³, whilst costs range from €10/m³ to €25/m³. However, both are expected to decrease at full scale and are sensitive to costs of energy, chemicals and revenue from recovered by-products. The LCA's highlight chemical and energy consumption as critical hotspots. Design considerations therefore focus on the reduction of chemicals, reuse or switching to lower impact chemicals, and maximising by-product recovery, and using renewable energy.

Environmental pollution, resource scarcity, and freshwater shortage are critical world challenges facing humanity. Process industry produces large amounts of brine, a waste water with a high salinity level and often critical raw materials. This study applies the social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) to quantify societal benefits and risks in developing brine treatment systems. S-LCA is implemented for hotspot and site-specific levels on four case studies of the Zero Brine project. Hotspot analysis focused on the major commodities. Social Hotspot Database was used as source for data and endpoint indicators. In addition, site-specific analysis regarded the social performance of the case studies companies; interviews and questionnaires were performed with representatives of the four case studies. The collected data were converted to scores with subcategory assessment method and performance reference points. The results show that for all case studies “Labor rights and decent work” and “Health and safety” indicators result in the largest impacts due to imports of commodities from developing countries. Site-specific results show that the overall social sustainability performance of the case study companies is at a good level. The only potential areas for improvement are the “Occupational accidents” and “Contribution to the local community”. The former are minimally higher for silica plant and higher for coal mine in relation to these sectors average accidents rates. Furthermore, the coal mine company can contribute more to the local community and reduce conflicts concerning environmental impacts at the city level. Common identified hotspots among the case studies are: China, India and Congo. Reducing imports from these countries will significantly improve the societal performance of the brine systems.

Energy transition is a result of mankind’s reaction to climate change and individuals are expected to have a crucial role in achieving it in developed countries. The purpose of this study is to apply the social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) tool and investigate the social performance of the Dutch energy transition while focusing on individual behavior, and if this is not possible, to develop indicators focusing on individual behavior dimension. The social performance of the energy transition in the Netherlands was assessed on a hotspot level. Additionally, the S-LCA guidelines were examined to identify the human dimension and behavior in the existing subcategories, and environmental psychology literature was explored to identify drivers and behavior that are important for the energy transition. Existing subcategories fail to show the extent of social progress of the Dutch energy transition nor how individuals perceive it. As a result, a total of 8 subcategories and 25 indicators at a hotspot and site-specific levels are developed. These subcategories and indicators focus on prosumer’s and individual’s behaviors, and traits of local communities. Application of the developed hotspot indicators shows that the Dutch government still subsidies fossil energy and, even though Dutch citizens show environmental concerns, the energy transition is delayed due to insufficient top-down coordination. Developed indicators are considered to be both feasible and relevant to investigate the social aspects of the energy transition in developed countries.

Furfural is a very promising product of lignocellulosic biomass-based biorefineries and has the potential to become a useful resource for further conversion and utilization. Aquatic plants show an enormous potential as feedstock since they do not compete for land use, and they require minimal water consumption in a biorefinery concept due to their very high water content. This work is focused on experimental studies of furfural production from water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) by means of aqueous, acid-catalyzed dehydration. The temperature range of the process, and the acid and seawater presence were chosen based on the previous relevant studies. The aim of the study was to determine whether water hyacinth is suitable for furfural production. The experiments were performed between 160°C and 200°C with a water hyacinth concentration of 2 wt%. The results suggest that the effects of acid catalyst presence on biomass dehydration are similar to the case of pure pentose dehydration. Furthermore, the addition of seawater did not have a positive catalytic effect in terms of the furfural yield. The maximum yield was 53.2 mol% based on the C5 sugar content in the original biomass. The furfural yield of 7.9 wt% of water hyacinth input was comparable to the yield of feedstocks such as corn cob, bagasse, and oat's residue and higher than the cases of rice straw or hulls. Thanks to the comparatively high pentose potential, water hyacinth shows promising results as a candidate feedstock for furfural production. A certain variability of pentosan should be taken into account, as the chemical composition of the plant depends on the source and harvesting seasons.

Social life cycle assessment (SLCA) was developed to complement the environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) and economic assessment. Contrary to LCA, SLCA is not yet standardized, and the consequential approach is little discussed in literature. This study aims to perform a consequential SLCA and investigate the applicability of the method in industrial decision making. The aforementioned assessment is done within the Zero Brine project, which works on zero liquid discharge technology for water, salt, and magnesium recovery from brine efluents. The developed SLCA systems are gate-to-gate, and the analysis is performed at two levels: Hotspot and site-specific. The system boundaries consist of a demineralized water (DW) production company, a chlor-alkali company, an electricity provider, a magnesium distributor in the Netherlands, and a Russian mining company. The latter exists only in the boundaries before the change due to the Zero Brine project, because recovered magnesium is expected to replace the Russian magnesium imported in the Netherlands. Within the system boundaries, the stakeholders contributing the most are the DW and the magnesium distributor companies. The former produces the brine and thus recovers the magnesium and salt. The latter is the exclusive distributor of Russian magnesium in the Netherlands. Overall, we find that the recovered magnesium results in improving social performance mainly in "Freedom of association and collective bargaining", "Fair salary", and "Health and Safety" due to decreasing the dependency of the Netherlands on Russia, while increasing operation in a country with much stronger environmental regulation and corporate commitment to sustainability issues. Modelling with SLCA may not result in the expected societal benefits, as the Russian community and workers may not benefit due to the large geographical boundaries of the system under study. Nevertheless, the application of the consequential approach can be considered suitable, yet complicated, for offering decision makers adequate social information. We recommend that decision makers in the DW company invest in magnesium recovery and that decision makers in the magnesium distributor company distribute the recovered magnesium.