Inventário do ciclo de vida do metanol para as condições brasileiras. / Life cycle inventory of methanol for brazilian conditions.

AUTOR(ES)

André Moreira de Camargo

DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2007

RESUMO

Life Cycle Assessment is a tool for environmental management which allows for the assessment of potential impacts and other environmental aspects associated to a product. This is done through the analysis of several steps since the extraction of raw materials from nature which go into the productive system (cradle) to the disposal of the final product in the environment (grave). The organized set of environmental aspects of the product under study is called "life cycle inventory", being comprised of values referring to energy consumption, air emissions, liquid effluents and solid residues, among others. The Pollution Prevention Group (Grupo de Prevenção da Poluição - GP2) of the Department of Chemical Engineering of the Polytechnic School, University of São Paulo, Brazil (Departamento de Engenharia Química da Escola Politécnica da USP), making use of Life Cycle Assessment methods (LCA), is set to study the environmental performance of biodiesel, a type of fuel made from vegetal oils and short chain primary alcohols, such as methanol. Therefore, besides contributing to LCA of biodiesel, the inventory of the life cycle of methanol under conditions in Brazil, object of the present study, should allow for the enhancement of Brazilian and worldwide databases, being also useful for several environmental performance analysis in which methanol is inserted. Due to the difficulty in collecting primary data directly from suppliers, the present study assumes some hypothetical considerations with the aim to complement unavailable national data with secondary data, thus completing the final inventory. Results of the inventory were confronted with those of a simplified model constructed from the Ecoinvent database, which led to comparison and discussion. A simplified analysis of the inventory leads to the conclusion that the environmental aspect referring to energy consumption is prominent in relation to other aspects, mainly due to the use of natural gas as energy source, thus reflecting in other classes of aspects, such as air emissions.

ASSUNTO(S)

environmental management life cycle assessment gestão ambiental methanol metanol avaliação do ciclo de vida gás natural

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