Article pubs.acs.org/est
Environmental and Economic Assessment of Electrothermal Swing Adsorption of Air Emissions from Sheet-Foam Production Compared to Conventional Abatement Techniques David L. Johnsen,† Hamidreza Emamipour,† Jeremy S. Guest,† and Mark J. Rood*,† †
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois, 205 North Mathews Avenue, Urbana, Illinois 61801 United States S Supporting Information *
ABSTRACT: A life-cycle assessment (LCA) and cost analysis are presented comparing the environmental and economic impacts of using regenerative thermal oxidizer (RTO), granular activated carbon (GAC), and activated carbon fiber cloth (ACFC) systems to treat gaseous emissions from sheet-foam production. The ACFC system has the lowest operational energy consumption (i.e., 19.2, 8.7, and 3.4 TJ/year at a full-scale facility for RTO, GAC, and ACFC systems, respectively). The GAC system has the smallest environmental impacts across most impact categories for the use of electricity from select states in the United States that produce sheet foam. Monte Carlo simulations indicate the GAC and ACFC systems perform similarly (within one standard deviation) for seven of nine environmental impact categories considered and have lower impacts than the RTO for every category for the use of natural gas to produce electricity. The GAC and ACFC systems recover adequate isobutane to pay for themselves through chemical-consumption offsets, whereas the net present value of the RTO is $4.1 M (20 years, $0.001/m3 treated). The adsorption systems are more environmentally and economically competitive than the RTO due to recovered isobutane for the production process and are recommended for resource recovery from (and treatment of) sheet-foam-production exhaust gas. Research targets for these adsorption systems should focus on increasing adsorptive capacity and saturation of GAC systems and decreasing electricity and N2 consumption of ACFC systems.
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INTRODUCTION Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) contribute to the formation of lower-tropospheric O3 (a criteria pollutant that contributes to photochemical smog) and negatively impact human health.1 Chemically inert VOCs, such as isobutane, are used as blowing agents to produce low-density sheet-foam and are emitted in dilute concentrations (99.5%,7 but the VOCs are oxidized and cannot be recovered for reuse. Also, the auxiliary fuel for oxidation of dilute VOC gas streams adds cost and results in additional combustion products © 2016 American Chemical Society
such as CO2 (a greenhouse gas) and products of incomplete combustion such as CO (a criteria pollutant) and NO (which is converted to the criteria pollutant NO2 in the atmosphere). Physical adsorption with activated carbon uses van der Waals forces to selectively remove VOCs from gas streams. GAC is the most widely used activated carbon for VOC adsorption due to its high surface area (i.e., 600 to 1600 m2/g), hydrophobic nature for relative humidity (RH) < 50%, and low cost (i.e., < $15/kg).8,9 GAC is often regenerated using steam or heated inert gas but contains ash, which can catalyze chemical oxidation, leading to fires in the adsorption vessel containing the GAC and VOC.10 Additional challenges with the regeneration process are that heat from the steam-laden regeneration gas is lost to system components,11 and the regeneration gas requires treatment to achieve high purity feedstocks for reuse.3 ACFC−ESA also utilizes physical adsorption to separate VOCs from gas streams. Joule heating is then used to regenerate the ACFC to provide a carefully controlled, concentrated VOC feed stream for reuse, which is achieved by independently controlling the carrier-gas flow rate and the electrical power Received: Revised: Accepted: Published: 1465
October 13, 2015 December 9, 2015 January 4, 2016 January 4, 2016 DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.5b05004 Environ. Sci. Technol. 2016, 50, 1465−1472
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applied to the ACFC. ACFC has faster heat and mass-transfer kinetics and a larger adsorption capacity than traditional GAC (up to twice as large) because it can have a larger surface area (i.e., 1790 m2/g),12 larger total micropore volume (i.e., 0.75 cm3/ g),12, smaller external dimensions (e.g., 10 μm diameter for ACFC compared to a 1000 μm diameter for GAC),4 and controllable morphology.13 Additionally, ACFC can be made from a synthetic feedstock that is free of ash14 (reducing risk of fires) and ACFC conducts electricity, which allows for electrothermal heating.4 ACFC−ESA has been demonstrated at the bench15,16 and pilot scale17 (a review of ACFC−ESA also provided in previous study).18 The main challenges for ACFC are that it is not as widely available and requires larger adsorbent costs (i.e., 100 to 500 $/kg) in comparison to GAC (i.e., < $15/ kg).19,20 Each of the three mentioned air pollution abatement systems has unique strengths and weaknesses across multiple sustainability decision-making criteria. Given that the purpose of these systems is to mitigate the effects of air pollution across spatial (e.g., local, regional, and global) and temporal (e.g., acute exposure, medium-term air quality, and long-term climate) scales, the consideration of trade-offs in the design of these systems should extend beyond economic comparisons to include broader objectives for environmental sustainability. If all three systems are designed to meet permit requirements that specify a fixed quality for gaseous emissions, the main differences in environmental impacts will stem from indirect environmental burdens across the technologies’ life cycles. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) provides a holistic method to make these comparisons because it considers emissions and material consumption throughout the system lifetime, which includes the consideration of the production, manufacturing, transportation, use, and disposal of materials.21 LCA studies have been performed that compare conventional air pollution abatement systems to novel systems, such as a plasma-oxidation treatment method for aliphatic hydrocarbons22 and photocatalytic oxidation with biofiltration for emissions from wood products,23 as well as to compare the treatment of toluene emissions (i.e., 100−1000 mg/ m3 at 10 000 m3/h) from GAC and RTO systems.24 To date, however, the sustainability implications of ACFC−ESA systems have not been characterized. The objective of this study is to determine the relative sustainability of alternative VOC abatement technologies (i.e., RTO, GAC, and ACFC systems) to manage gaseous emissions from sheet-foam production. Bench- and full-scale data were used to characterize technology performance with both LCA and cost analysis in a Monte Carlo framework. Given the anticipated importance of electricity to each system’s relative sustainability, the analysis was repeated across the five states, with the largest VOC emissions resulting from the production of sheet-foam (each with its own locality-specific fuel mix). This study represents the first integrated LCA and cost assessment designed to characterize the relative sustainability of conventional air pollution abatement systems (i.e., RTO and GAC systems) and an ACFC system for gas emissions from sheet-foam production. The goals of this study are to (1) elucidate which inputs and emissions govern the life cycle environmental impacts and costs of each VOC treatment system, (2) characterize the relative environmental and economic sustainability of these systems under uncertainty, and (3) identify a path forward for ACFC− ESA development that addresses critical challenges to its environmental and economic sustainability.
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METHODS AND MATERIALS
Pollution Abatement Description. An RTO is considered the benchmark for this study because it is an established, commercially available abatement system for treating VOC emissions.3 The RTO’s primary system components include a blower, natural gas burners, an incinerator vessel filled with gravel, and a heat exchanger. During start-up, the natural gas burners are activated for up to 6 h to heat the incinerator vessel to 900 °C. The burners are then deactivated, and the blower is activated to direct the isobutane-laden air stream through the heat exchanger and into the incinerator vessel. Natural gas is injected into the gas stream when needed to ensure an appropriate vessel temperature. An oxidation temperature of 900 to 1100 °C was considered here to achieve >98% combustion of isobutane.3 A steam-regenerated GAC system was designed to achieve >98% isobutane recovery efficiency.3 The primary system components used for this study include a blower, two vessels containing GAC (two vessels considered in this study to maximize kg VOC treated/kg adsorbent), a steam generator, a condenser, and a compressor. The blower directs the exhaust gas stream from the production process to one of the adsorption vessels where the isobutane is adsorbed onto GAC providing purified exhaust air. The second vessel is regenerated using steam, and the steam and isobutane gas flow is passed through a condenser (i.e., heat exchanger with cooling water) that liquefies and separates the water vapor from the isobutane gas stream. The resulting isobutane gas stream is compressed to provide liquid isobutane for the sheet-foam production process. After regeneration heating with steam, air is passed through that vessel for GAC drying and cooling. The vessels alternate between adsorption and regeneration−cooling cycles so that one vessel is always adsorbing isobutane from the gas stream while the other vessel is regenerating and cooling. An ACFC−ESA system was designed to achieve >98% isobutane recovery efficiency.5 The primary system components for this study include a blower, two vessels containing ACFC, a source of N2, and a compressor. The blower directs the gas stream from the production process to one of the vessels where the isobutane is adsorbed onto ACFC providing purified exhaust air. N2 is passed through the second vessel to provide an inert environment followed by regeneration of the ACFC using electrothermal heating. The resulting N2−isobutane exhaust gas is passed through a compressor to provide liquid isobutane for sheet-foam production. After regeneration, N2 continues to pass through the vessel for cooling. The vessels alternate between adsorption and regeneration−cooling cycles so that one vessel is always adsorbing isobutane from the gas stream while the other vessel is regenerating and cooling. Goal, Scope, and LCA System Boundaries. This LCA was designed to characterize the relative environmental impacts of treating the exhaust gas stream from sheet-foam production with RTO, GAC, or ACFC systems and was performed according to ISO standards.25,26 Each abatement system was designed to treat a reference flow of 445 000 m3/day over a lifespan of 20 years on the basis of operating-condition data obtained from a full-scale sheet-foam production facility. The functional unit for this study was the treatment of 162.5 million m3 (actual conditions) of an exhaust gas stream (i.e., one year of exhaust gas) that contained 2400−3900 ppmv of isobutane in air to achieve 98% isobutane removal efficiency. This functional unit allows for a comparison of the same total mass of treated isobutane between abatement 1466
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Figure 1. System boundaries (dashed lines) of volatile organic compound abatement systems (i.e., regenerative thermal oxidizer (RTO), granular activated carbon, and activated carbon fiber cloth systems) for treating isobutane emissions from sheet-foam production; boxes outside of system boundaries are not considered for this study.
production were determined assuming a polyacrylonitrile fiber precursor (i.e., demonstrated ACFC precursor) was activated with the same process used to produce GAC from coal (Table S6). The activation process for ACFC and GAC both include pyrolysis followed by activation in CO2 or steam, so GAC activation is representative of ACFC activation. It was assumed that all GAC and ACFC were inert wastes and sent to a landfill because activated carbon is inert and the adsorbed isobutane is nontoxic. Impacts from treating cooling air and water were not considered because these resources were recirculated. Select fuel mixes were considered for the production of electricity, as discussed in the Results section. Life Cycle Inventory. Data for the inventory analysis were obtained from an Indiana sheet-foam production company using a questionnaire and e-mail correspondence. These data included the process operating schedule and conditions, isobutane removal requirements for the abatement systems, and information about an existing RTO (Table S1). The RTO, GAC, and ACFC systems were analyzed and designed to provide the remaining system inputs for the life cycle inventory. Direct emissions and raw material requirements were supplemented with inventory data from Ecoinvent version 3 (accessed via SimaPro version 7.3.3). Database processes used for each inventory parameter are provided in Tables S5 and S6. A detailed description of the design equations and all inputs that were used to model the systems and their performance are also provided in Section A. Given the strong influence of electricity production on the life cycle inventory of each system, inventories were generated using the electricity fuel mix from each of the five U.S. states with the largest VOC emissions resulting from the production of sheetfoam (i.e., fuel mixes in Table S7). These states include North
systems (i.e., total volume of gas treated is consistent with the functional unit used in previous studies22,24). The 98% combustion−removal efficiency is a typical achievable control (i.e., abatement) efficiency for sheet-foam production emissions.27 The system boundaries for this study are provided in Figure 1. These boundaries include the abatement system’s processes but do not include the sheet-foam production process or fugitive emissions after production, which were not influenced by the selection of the abatement technology. Additionally, reactor housings, piping, and support structures for abatement system construction and end of life were excluded from this analysis, given that they were expected to be similar among technologies and because operation-phase process inputs (in particular, energy consumption) were expected to govern life cycle environmental impacts, consistent with previous studies.24,28,29 The impacts from the production, transportation, use, disposal, and emissions from the process materials and fuels during system operation were considered, including unique media required for system startup. Allocation and Assumptions. The emissions from burning isobutane were determined based on burning butane using the AP-42 emissions standards30 (i.e., isobutane and butane are isomers and are expected to result in similar emissions), and the emissions from isobutane oxidation (i.e., isobutane and natural gas mixture) are assumed to be the same as the emissions from independently burning isobutane and natural gas. These assumptions did not affect the LCA results because the impacts from the emissions that result from burning isobutane resulted in less than 1% of the total impacts (across all impact categories) to operate the RTO. Recovered liquid isobutane was considered an avoided product because it can be reused as a blowing agent for the sheet-foam production process. The impacts for ACFC 1467
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using a Monte Carlo framework with 100 000 runs (Oracle Crystal Ball, Fusion Edition, 11.1.2.3.000). Sensitivity analysis was also simultaneously performed using Oracle Crystal Ball software to determine the effect of each input variable on the systems’ impacts. The software provides rank correlation coefficients between every input and output value for the model, in which positive coefficients indicate input and output values change in the same direction, and negative coefficients indicate the values change in opposite directions. A higher absolute rank correlation coefficient indicates that the input variable has a more significant effect on the output value. For each input, the square of the rank correlation coefficient was normalized to the sum of the squares of the rank correlation coefficients of all the model inputs to provide the percentage of the contribution of variation for a single input to a single output.
Carolina (1516 ton/year in VOC emissions from sheet-foam production), Georgia (1011 ton/year), Indiana (951 ton/year), Michigan (946 ton/year), and Illinois (936 ton/year).31 The sum of these states’ direct emissions constitutes 39% of the total US VOC emissions from sheet-foam production.31 Electricity produced only from natural gas was also selected as an alternative design option to evaluate the impacts of this increasingly common fuel on the relative impacts of the systems. Life Cycle Impact Assessment. The impact assessment for this LCA was performed using the Tool for Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and other Environmental Impacts (TRACI) method version 2.0.32 The midpoint impact categories in TRACI include stratospheric O3 depletion (kg CFC-11 equiv (eq)), global warming potential (kg CO2 eq), tropospheric smog formation (kg O3 eq), acidification (H+ moles eq), eutrophication (kg N eq), carcinogenics (comparative toxicity units for health (CTUh)), non carcinogenics (CTUh), respiratory effects (kg PM 10 eq, where PM 10 is particulate matter ≤10 μm in diameter), and ecotoxicity (comparative toxicity units for ecotoxicity, CTUe). Although all impact categories were evaluated, smog was the primary impact of concern for this study because isobutane is regulated as a smog precursor.25 In fact, the direct emission of isobutane into the atmosphere does not result in impacts in any of the other environmental impacts characterized by TRACI (i.e., TRACI characterization factors are zero for all categories except smog). Cost Analysis. The cost of each system was estimated by leveraging cost information from an Indiana sheet-foam production facility (that uses an RTO to treat isobutane emissions) supplemented with data from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) control-cost manual.3 All monetary values are presented as 2014 $ USD, and cost input parameters are provided in Table S13. It was assumed that performance testing, start-up, and operation labor costs are the same for the all systems, and all other adsorption system costs were predicted using the USEPA control cost manual.3 The net present value (NPV, $ USD) of each system was determined by considering the capital and annual operating costs (i.e., includes offsets from isobutane recovery and maintenance costs) over a 20 year life span of each system with an interest rate of 4.5% (average federal interest rate from 1983−2013).33 Given that the adsorption systems have a positive annual cash flow after the initial purchase of capital materials, their internal rate of return was also determined. Uncertainty and Sensitivity Analyses. All LCA variables were assumed to follow normal distributions unless compelling evidence suggested otherwise, and the uncertainty of each input parameter was estimated using a Pedigree matrix.34 According to the Pedigree matrix approach, the input values were assigned a coefficient of variation of 0.05 for verified data from site-specific measurements, 0.10 for estimates based on detailed design data or design values, 0.2 for scaled values or values based on other similar systems, 0.3 for expert estimates (e.g., engineer at sheetfoam production facility), and 0.5 for nonexpert estimates (Tables S1−S4). A coefficient of variation of 0.10 was used for all cost data, which were obtained directly from the sheet-foam production facility or from the USEPA control cost manual methods. Lognormal distributions were assigned to the shipping distances to avoid negative shipping distances while still accounting for the large coefficient of variation corresponding with these distances. After determining distributions for each input parameter, we performed an uncertainty analysis of the impacts of each system
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RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Abatement System Inventories. These life-cycle inventory results provide insight into differences in the material and energy requirements for the isobutane abatement systems (Table S8). The isobutane production and shipping requirements for the adsorption systems are 2 orders of magnitude lower than those for the RTO because the adsorption systems recover isobutane, reducing requirements for isobutane production and shipping. In a comparison of the adsorption technologies, one key difference is that the GAC system requires 36 times more activated carbon (by mass) than the ACFC system. This difference in activated carbon requirement stems from three factors: (1) GAC has a lower adsorption capacity than ACFC, (2) GAC requires more frequent replacement (i.e., every 5 years) than ACFC (i.e., every 20 years), and (3) the GAC system has a longer adsorption cycle than the ACFC system (i.e., for the same mass of activated carbon, steam regeneration has a longer duration than electrothermal heating due to the added time for heating and drying cycles). Although the electricity requirements for the ACFC system are more than 2.5 times those of the other systems, ACFC consumes less total operating energy than the other systems (when considering electricity, steam, and natural gas), with 19.2, 8.7, and 3.4 TJ/year consumed by the RTO, GAC, and ACFC systems, respectively. However, higher electricity consumption by ACFC makes it more sensitive to locality-specific fuel mixes (and their associated environmental impacts), and this technology was the only system requiring N2 gas as an input for operation. The implications of these differences are discussed in more detail below. Cost of Abatement Systems. The NPV (±uncertainties) for the RTO, GAC, and ACFC systems are $4.14 M ± 0.24, $0.00 M ± 1.5, and -$0.05 M ± 1.1, respectively. The uncertainty of the NPV for the RTO is smaller than that of the adsorption systems because the NPV of the adsorption systems is more affected by the operating conditions than that of the RTO. However, the NPVs of the adsorption systems are greater than two standard deviations from that of the RTO, indicating they are more economical for treating the sheet-foam production exhaust. The positive annual return for the adsorption systems results in an internal rate of return of 11% and 8% for the GAC and ACFC systems, respectively. Thus, implementing an adsorption system eliminates the annual RTO cost and provides an estimated internal rate of return ≥8% over the 20 year lifespan of the systems. The percentages of the contributions of the input parameters to the NPV of each abatement system are provided in Table S15. The costs for the RTO are primarily affected by the cost for 1468
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Figure 2. Global warming (left panel), smog (center panel), and carcinogenics (right panel) resulting from isobutane abatement systems for RTO (left, red), GAC (center, green), and ACFC (right, blue) to demonstrate the sensitivity of relative impacts to the source of fuel used to provide electricity. Relative impacts are shown for Indiana and North Carolina (also representative of Georgia, Michigan, and Illinois) and for electricity solely from natural gas power plants; all values are normalized to the abatement system with the largest magnitude of impacts within each impact category and electricity mix.
Figure 3. Relative life cycle environmental impacts of RTO (left, red), GAC (center, green), and ACFC (right, blue) isobutane abatement systems. Solid bars represent mean environmental impacts and offsets for treating isobutane emissions from sheet-foam production, triangles represent net average impacts, and error bars extend to ± one standard deviation from the net mean. Values are normalized to the abatement system with the largest magnitude of impacts within each impact category.
are more economically competitive for applications with higher isobutane emission rates. Environmental Impacts of Abatement Systems. The environmental impacts from using these systems to treat isobutane emissions were compared using a range of fuel mixes to produce electricity (i.e., as previously mentioned, five mixes corresponding to the five U.S. states with the largest VOC emissions from sheet-foam production). Figure 2 provides select
natural gas (i.e., price and usage of natural gas). However, the adsorption systems are most affected by the mean isobutane emission rate because this parameter directly affects the amount of isobutane that can be recovered (i.e., avoided product cost). These results demonstrate that the RTO is more economically competitive for applications that require low natural gas usage and when natural gas is inexpensive, while the adsorption systems 1469
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Environmental Science & Technology environmental impacts from treatment of the sheet-foam production exhaust gas when using the North Carolina electricity fuel mix (also representative of Georgia, Michigan, and Illinois), the Indiana electricity fuel mix, and a 100% natural gas fuel mix. The Indiana electricity fuel mix was included in Figure 2 because it results in unique trends compared to the other states, primarily due to a high portion of electricity from coal (i.e., 89% of Indiana electricity is produced from coal, whereas 90%) or eliminates N2 consumption. N2 would only be required to initially fill the system or to account for leaks. For a 60% and 80% reduction in N2 consumption, the ACFC system outperforms the GAC system in three and five of the nine impact categories (compared to one impact category from the conditions in Figure 3 and Table 1), respectively, and is within one standard deviation of the GAC system impacts in all other categories. For any value above 80% reduction in N 2 consumption, the ACFC system outperforms the GAC system in five of nine impact categories and is within one standard deviation in all other impact categories. Thus, N2 carrier gas recirculation is a critical area of future research that can reduce the impacts of the ACFC system so that it is more environmentally competitive with the GAC system. Ultimately, the adoption of adsorption technologies will rely on financial competitiveness relative to more conventional abatement technologies (e.g., RTO) and demonstrated performance at full-scale. This research has identified specific elements of each system to target (Figure 4B,C), but more robust mechanistic modeling of these processes could increase opportunities for innovation. For instance, the ACFC system design model can be improved by expanding electrothermal heating predictions to account for adsorbent mass and adsorbate composition, as well as a N2 consumption term that models the isobutane concentration at the inlet of the compressor (e.g., using the Dubinin−Raduskevich equation, regeneration temperature, and N2 gas flow rate). However, a critical advantage of these recovery systems is their ability to reduce the consumption of VOCs (i.e., isobutane), but their true potential will not be realized unless their development is integrated with manufacturing process design (e.g., through complete gas recirculation).
is directly related to the mass of adsorbent (i.e., kg steam required/kg adsorbent), such that increasing GAC adsorption capacity reduces the steam requirement for a given mass of adsorbed isobutane, which reduces the steam consumption and the corresponding impacts. The reduction of superficial velocity also reduces environmental impacts, especially eutrophication and carcinogenics. Although the GAC system model can be improved by adjusting the steam-requirement predictions with a term that includes parameters such as adsorbent mass, adsorbed mass, and adsorbate composition, these results indicate that research and development efforts should focus on increasing adsorption capacity and develop designs that approach saturation while (to the degree possible) reducing superficial velocities in reactor chambers. Consistent with the GAC system, the environmental impacts of ACFC−ESA are most sensitive to the mass flow of isobutane entering the recovery system (Table S12). Distinct from GAC, however, is the fact that the largest sources of detrimental environmental impacts of the ACFC−ESA system is caused by electricity usage and N2 consumption (Figure 3). As a result, the environmental performance of this emerging technology is expected to be most sensitive to design and operational parameters that influence the consumption of these resources. Specifically, the input parameters that have the largest effect on the ACFC−ESA environmental system impacts are the concentration of desorbed isobutane and the electrothermal heating energy per mass of adsorbate (Figure 4C). To improve the environmental sustainability of this emerging technology, future research efforts should target reductions in electricity requirements for regeneration cycles and reducing N2 consumption. Transitioning from Abatement to Integrated Resource Management. A summary of the results from this study are provided in Table 1. As this research demonstrates, there is significant value (both financial and environmental) in the local recovery and reuse of isobutane by a manufacturer. Specifically, two recovery technologies (GAC and ACFC systems) were evaluated and shown to recover adequate quantities of isobutane to offset all construction and operational costs of the abatement system as well as the majority of life cycle environmental impacts (Figure 3). Beyond simple mitigation, these technologies enable facilities to transition toward more holistic design approaches that manage isobutane in more of a closed-loop system. Expanding on this concept, the purified gas (i.e., with 98% isobutane recovered) that is exhausted from the absorption systems also has the potential to be reused as the inlet carrier gas
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ASSOCIATED CONTENT
S Supporting Information *
The Supporting Information is available free of charge on the ACS Publications website at DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.5b05004. Descriptions of abatement system design methods for the three considered systems, life cycle assessment input parameters, life cycle assessment results, cost assessment input parameters, and cost assessment results. Tables showing design operating conditions and an air pollution abatement system, GAC system input data, shipping 1471
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(17) Subrenat, A.; Le Cloirec, P. Removal of VOC by adsorption desorption cycles using activated carbon cloth filter: Regeneration by Joule effect. Adsorption Science and Technology; Do, D. D., Ed.; World Scientific: Singapore, 2000; pp 361−365. (18) Le Cloirec, P. Adsorption onto Activated Carbon Fiber Cloth and Electrothermal Desorption of Volatile Organic Compound (VOCs): A Specific Review. Chin. J. Chem. Eng. 2012, 20 (3), 461−468. (19) Cheng, T. L. and Taiwan Carbon Technology Co., Ltd. Price quote for activated carbon fiber cloth #AW1103. Personal communication, 2010. (20) Hayes, J. and American Kynol. Price quote for activated carbon fiber cloth #ACFC-5092−15. Personal communication, 2010. (21) Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC). Life cycle assessment: Principles and practice. National Risk Management Research Laboratory, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: Cincinnati, OH, 2006. (22) Abromaitis, V.; Ochmanaite, V.; Denafas, G.; Martuzevicius, D. LCA-based comparison of VOC removal from exhaust gases by plasma and “conventional” end-of-pipe methods. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Environmental Engineering. Vilnius, Lithuania, 2011; p. 1−5. (23) Babbitt, C. W.; Stokke, J. M.; Mazyck, D. W.; Lindner, A. S. Design-based life cycle assessment of hazardous air pollutant control options at pulp and paper mills: a comparison of thermal oxidation to photocatalytic oxidation and biofiltration. J. Chem. Technol. Biotechnol. 2008, 84 (5), 725−737. (24) Saffarian, S. A Study of Life Cycle Assessment in Air Pollution Control: Comparison of Activated Carbon Adsorption and Incineration. Lambert Academic Publishing: Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010. (25) ISO. Environmental Management Life Cycle Assessment Principles and Framework, Report EN ISO 14040; 2006. (26) ISO. Environmental Management Life Cycle Assessment Requirements and Guidelines, Report EN ISO 14044; 2006. (27) Title V Operating Permit. T099-31133-00028. Indiana Department of Environmental Management: Indianapolis, IN, 2012. (28) Fruergaard, T.; Hyks, J.; Astrup, T. Life-cycle assessment of selected management options for air pollution control residues from waste incineration. Sci. Total Environ. 2010, 408 (20), 4672−4680. (29) Sauer, B.; Franklin, W.; Miner, R.; Word, D.; Upton, B. Environmental tradeoffs: Life cycle approach to evaluate the burdens and benefits of emission control systems in the wood panel industry. Forest Products J. 2002, 52 (3), 50−59. (30) AP 42 emissions standards. Section 1.5: Liquefied petroleum gas combustion. United States Environmental Protection Agency: Washington, D.C., 1996. (31) Electric power monthly: State net electricity profile by source. United States Energy Information Administration: Washington, D.C., 2014. (32) Bare, J. C.; Norris, G.; Pennington, D. W.; McKone, T. TRACI − The tool for the reduction and assessment of chemical and other environmental impacts. J. of Industrial Ecology. 2003, 6 (3). (33) USFED. Selected interests rates (daily) − H.15. Board of governors of the Federal Reserve interest rates (2014). http://www. federalreserve.gov/releases/h15/data.htm#fn1 (accessed Jun 2014). (34) Weidema, B. P.; Wesnaes, M. S. Data quality management for life cycle inventories-an example of using data quality indicators. J. Cleaner Prod. 1996, 4 (3−4), 167−174. (35) Electric Power Monthly: State Net Electricity Profile by Source. United States Energy Information Administration: Washington, D.C., 2014.
distances, Ecoinvent 3 database values, materials to produce 1 kg of GAC and ACFC, an electricity production source profile, life cycle inventory of systems, annual environmental impacts, input parameters to the environmental impacts, air pollution abatement and voltatile organic compound abatement systems cost assessments input data, and life cycle costs for systems. (PDF)
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Author
*Phone: (217) 333-6963; fax: (217) 333-9464; e-mail: mrood@ illinois.edu. Notes
The authors declare no competing financial interest.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation and its supplemental Research Experience for Undergraduates support under grant no. CBET 12-3620.
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REFERENCES
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DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.5b05004 Environ. Sci. Technol. 2016, 50, 1465−1472
