Life Cycle Assessment as an engineer's tool?

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an increasingly important evaluation tool for decision making and stakeholder discussion; especially when applied during the planning phase, it can pinpoint process steps with a high environmental impact and thus, provide guidance towards optimising the actual technology implementation. These aspects influencing the engineer's work are investigated on the basis of an LCA of the production of Biodiesel from Tallow and Used Vegetable Oil. Impact assessments with the Sustainable Process Index (SPI) and with the problem-oriented approach, show largely concordant results. The highly aggregated indicator SPI makes comparison between options possible. It provides “a bigger picture” of the environmental impacts and is helpful in decision making.