This resource contains a presentation and a worksheet that will introduce the concepts of a life cycle assessment. It also considers how a Chemical Engineer would look to cut emissions and increase process sustainability. With the world facing a climate crisis it is key to be able to understand how to quantify and reduce emissions.

Key Specification Points Covered:

AQA GCSE Chemistry – 4.10.21 Life Cycle Assessment

• Life cycle assessments (LCAs) are carried out to assess the environmental impact of products in each
  of these stages:
  • Extracting and processing raw materials
  • Manufacturing and packaging
  • Use and operation during its lifetime
  • Disposal at the end of its useful life, including transport and distribution at each stage.
• Use of water, resources, energy sources and production of some wastes can be fairly easily quantified.
• Allocating numerical values to pollutant effects is less straightforward and requires value judgements,
  so LCA is not a purely objective process.
• Selective or abbreviated LCAs can be devised to evaluate a product but these can be misused to
  reach pre-determined conclusions, eg in support of claims for advertising purposes.
• Students should be able to carry out simple comparative LCAs for shopping bags made from plastic
  and paper.

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at engbam.com.