Framework for the environmental damage assessment of an industrial process chain

On the basis of the life cycle approach, a framework for the assessment of the environmental damages generated by an industrial process chain is established. In order to consider all the processes of the life cycle, a methodology is developed based on an eco-matrix formed by chemical process eco-vectors containing all their environmental loads. To perform the impact assessment, environmental damage indicators are estimated in the most accurate way possible for each process. For this, site-specific evaluation is carried out applying damage functions and, hence, for each damage indicator, a damage matrix is obtained. In order to make the methodology more practical, options like dominance analysis are presented. Because of the large number of environmental loads, the focus is on the priority pollutants and then the final estimations are done with one indicator per safeguard subject. The damage indicators selected in this paper are damage costs, ecological damage parameter (both site-specific) and global damage estimates. As for the verification of the methodology, a study has been carried out based on the life cycle of the electricity produced by a municipal waste incinerator.