Share this content
Kazi Parvez Fattah, The University of Kansas, USA
,Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a methodology for assessing environmental impacts associated with all the stages of the life cycle of a commercial product, process, or service.
It started in the 1960’s, but was used as a scientific process in environmental studies in the 1990’s. LCA has become a commonly used tool to analyse environmental impacts or benefits for products, services, wastewater, solid wastes, and air pollution control technologies, as well as processes, etc. The analysis is done primarily to assess different options and to analyze the environmental impact of the various technologies. Results from such analysis would be helpful for decision-making processes to evaluate performance of the technologies and their social, economic, and environmental impact on the society.
Recently, LCA has been widely applied in environmental studies to assess the environmental impact of different technologies, scenarios, and operation alternatives associated with environmental systems. It has been commonly used with the purpose of achieving comprehensive understanding of the environmental implications of different treatment technologies to provide useful guidance for identifying the potential environmental implications of selecting one or another technology.
The effectiveness of any LCA study is based on two main things: the defined goal and scope of the study, and the quality of the data that is used to assess the impacts. As such, LCA is regarded as a complex, detailed process of breaking down all the inputs that go into making a process and looking at the outputs that would occur as a result.
We are aiming to publish a themed issue on this important topic. Please submit your abstracts for high quality research and review papers that focus on:
- Environmental footprints of treatment processes.
- Life cycle inventory analysis of environmental studies.
- Comparison of environmental impacts of treatment technologies.
- Modelling software used in LCA studies based on the ISO Standardization.
- Paradigm shift from pollutant removal to resource recovery in treatment.
- Life cycle assessment for a circular economy.
- Life cycle assessment for low carbon transformation or carbon neutral technologies.
- Life Cycle Costing (LCC), Social LCA (SLCA) and Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA).
- Other related areas.
Share this content