Examinando por Autor "Dufour, Javier"

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1er Workshop esLCAGestión del ciclo de vida en los sectores de laconstrucción y de la energía. Libro de Abstracts
(Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, 2016) Martín-Gamboa, Mario; Iribarren, Diego; Dufour, Javier
El Análisis del Ciclo de Vida (ACV) y otras metodologías derivadas como las huellas de carbono e hídrica son actualmente herramientas ampliamente reconocidas para evaluar la viabilidad ambiental de procesos y productos, como demuestra, a nivel español, el Real Decreto 163/2014 por el que se crea el registro de huella de carbono o, a nivel europeo, la creación de la Plataforma Europea de Análisis del Ciclo de Vida y la identificación del ACV dentro del programa marco Horizon 2020 como una herramienta clave para la toma de decisiones y la elaboración de políticas. España dispone de diferentes grupos trabajando en el campo del ACV que son referencia a nivel mundial. La Red de Excelencia esLCA pretende potenciar las sinergias entre todos los grupos, dando un salto cualitativo que permita afrontar de forma efectiva los retos pendientes en materia de ACV. Esto supondría un gran paso en cuanto a la fiabilidad de los análisis de sostenibilidad asociados, posibilitando una mejor toma de decisiones a diferentes escalas (política, industrial, etc.).
Assessing the circularity of post-consumer HDPE milk bottles through open-loop recycling and their environmental impact
(Elsevier, 2024-06) Blanco, Aymara; Juan, Rafael; Istrate, Robert; Paredes, Beatriz; Martín-Gamboa, Mario; Domínguez, Carlos; Dufour, Javier; García-Muñoz, Rafael A.
Plastics are key in the packaging sector, but their widespread use contributes significantly to environmental challenges, such as the short life and high daily production of HDPE milk bottles. This study therefore aims to find a solution to this plastic waste, focusing on mechanical recycling. A comprehensive characterization of this post-consumer recycled HDPE reveals significant PP contamination, which poses a significant barrier due to polyolefin incompatibility, a common challenge in mixed plastics recycling. To mitigate this, blending with virgin HDPE and the use of various compatibilizers were investigated to improve the recyclability of the material. Several extrusion cycles were performed to analyse the thermo-mechanical degradation and to measure the performance and stability of the blends. The environmental impact of incorporating recycled HDPE into new bottles was also evaluated. Comparative evaluations with virgin bottles show that incorporating 25% or 50% recycled HDPE in the bottle yields carbon footprint reductions of 3% and 14%, respectively. These benefits could amplify with a wind-powered supply chain and a 100% recycled content. The findings lay the foundation for future plastic recycling scenarios, including dedicated sorting for this waste stream, providing a pathway to address the environmental impact of HDPE milk bottle disposal through recycling practices
Environmental life cycle assessment of polyhydroxyalkanoates production by purple phototrophic bacteria mixed cultures
(Elsevier, 2023) Martin-Gamboa, Mario; Allegue, Luis D.; Puyol, Daniel; Melero, Juan Antonio; Dufour, Javier
Bioplastics offer a promising sustainable alternative to petroleum-based plastics due to their biodegradability as well as favourable thermal and mechanical properties. Among different types of biobased polymers, the production of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) using purple phototrophic bacteria (PPB) and low-value substrates has gained increasing interest. Despite the momentum, challenges regarding the scalability and environmental feasibility of this biopolymer production pathway remain. In response, this study employs an exploratory LCA approach to quantitatively assesses the potential environmental implications of PHA production in powder form and the joint management of the organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW) through a novel photobiorefinery system that uses PPB mixed cultures. Environmental impacts were tested under multiple improvement scenarios and benchmarked against the production of conventional fossil-based granulate or unprocessed plastics, including low density polyethylene (LDPE), polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polyurethane (PU). The photobiorefinery stage was found to have the greatest contribution to the impact categories, particularly due to direct emissions, consumption of electricity and production of extractive chemical agents used. These factors accounted for over 70% of the photobiorefinery impact in all cases. Avoided impacts provided net favourable outcomes in terms of carbon footprint and fossil resources when comparing PHA production to conventional plastics, especially PET and PU, with impact reductions ranging from 30% to 60%, respectively. However, when considering other impact categories like eutrophication, this situation was less favourable. The exploration of alternative scenarios offered significant impact reductions, especially when renewable electricity or an environmentally friendly extraction agent is used. Moreover, minimizing methane losses or co-producing hydrogen in the photobiorefinery had a notably positive effect on the carbon footprint, reducing the impact by more than 2 t of CO2 eq per t of PHA powder compared to the base case. Therefore, the implementation of feasible improvement measures in the short term can position PHA produced by mixed cultures as a sustainable alternative to petroleum-based plastics.
Environmental life cycle assessment of the incorporation of recycled high-density polyethylene to polyethylene pipe grade resins
(Elsevier, 2021) Istrate, Ioan-Robert; Rafael Juan; Martin-Gamboa, Mario; Domínguez, Carlos; García-Muñoz, Rafael A.; Dufour, Javier
Plastic recycling involves a range of potential environmental benefits, from curbing landfill and incineration rates to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. However, the main challenge is to find applications where recycled plastic can successfully provide the same functionality as the replaced virgin plastic. Particularly, the incorporation of recycled high-density polyethylene (HDPE) to polyethylene (PE) pipe grade resins is a great challenge that is not currently being implemented in the manufacture of pressure pipes. In this study, life cycle assessment (LCA) is applied to quantitatively evaluate the potential environmental impacts from producing PE pipe grade resins from recycled HDPE blended with virgin HDPE. The LCA involves four HDPE waste feedstocks (crates/caps, packaging/detergency bottles, post-consumer industrial containers, and automobile fuel tanks) and two PE pipe grades (PE80 and PE100). Moreover, different allocation approaches that affect the LCA of plastic recycling, namely the cut-off approach and the Circular Footprint Formula, were investigated. The recycled content was found to largely determine the LCA results. In this regard, the production of PE80 quality from the pure HDPE waste feedstocks (such as automobile fuel tanks and post-consumer industrial containers) allows a higher recycled content, thus resulting in lower impacts. Compared with a 100 % virgin resin, these two sce- narios show 80 % and 53 % less carbon footprint if the waste feedstock is considered burdens free (cut-off allocation). These percentages however decrease to 32 % and 20 % if the impacts and benefits are shared ac- cording to the Circular Footprint Formula. These trends were similarly observed for most of the impact categories evaluated, such as, acidification and fossil resources. The robustness of these results is supported by error propagation via Monte Carlo simulation.
Environmental life cycle assessment of UV-C LEDs vs. mercury lamps and oxidant selection for diclofenac degradation
(Elsevier, 2024) Pizzichetti, Raffaella; Martín-Gamboa, Mario; Pablos, Cristina; Reynolds, Ken; Stanley, Simon; Dufour, Javier; Marugán, Javier
This study is the first environmental comparison between a UV-C LED lamp (emitting at 265 nm) and mercury lamps employed in a lab-scale photoreactor for water treatment purification purposes, using the removal of diclofenac as a case study. Ex-ante life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology was used as a robust method to identify hotspots and recommendations at the early stage of the UV-C LEDs technology. The functional unit was defined as “the treatment of 1 L of polluted water with 20 mg L−1 of diclofenac to achieve a 90% removal of the contaminant”, while the system boundaries include the production and the operation of the photoreactors, following a cradle-to-gate approach. Several scenarios were explored, and overall, the UV-C LED lamp shows a promising environmental performance, with less or similar potential impacts than the mercury lamps in the 16 categories selected from the Environmental Footprint (EF) method. In particular, it reveals less impact in “human toxicity non-cancer” and “resource use minerals and metals” and presents electricity as the main source of impact. Given the higher efficacy of the UV-driven advanced oxidation processes compared to the UV irradiation alone, and since no studies have previously been conducted on the sustainability of free chlorine (FC) as an oxidant in water treatment, a comparison between UV-C, UV-C/H2O2, and UV-C/FC while employing the 265 nm UV-C LED lamp was also assessed. UV-C/H2O2 was more sustainable than UV-C/FC for the same treatment time, but both led to an overall impact reduction of 35% and 30%, respectively. To increase sustainability, employing cleaner energy sources such as photovoltaic or wind energy also resulted in an 80% and 93% reduction in the “climate change” category. Overall, this study demonstrates that using UV-C LEDs and the selected oxidants for water purification is beneficial and encourages the scale-up of the system.
Simulation of the deasphalting process of crude oils: Models development and extraction conditions analysis
(Elsevier, 2021) Las Heras, Igor De; Dufour, Javier; Coto, Baudilio
Heavy crude oils are under constant investigation due to light oil exhaustion. So, its use is compulsory to meet the world energy demand. Heavy crude oils present several drawbacks as high content of metals, heteroatoms, and asphaltenes, and, therefore, upgrading processes are becoming essential. A deasphalting process, conventionally used for vacuum residue upgrading, can be an interesting pretreatment to eliminate the heavier phases and ease the crude processing in conventional refining facilities. Most of the models developed for deasphalting simulation show problems to be implemented in simulation software packages. In this work, a versatile deasphalting simulation method is developed, composed by the definition of a synthetic crude oil model, formed by discrete pseudo components, and a deasphalting model approaching the process to a liquid-liquid extraction based on the thermodynamic model modified UNIFAC (Dortmund). Both models were satisfactorily validated. The deasphalting method was used to explore the solvent/crude ratio, extraction temperatures, and alternative solvents in substitution of conventional light paraffins. Higher extraction temperatures did not enhance remarkably the deasphalting process and the optimum solvent to crude ratio depends on the solvent type. Alcohols were found as promising compounds as their use is recommended by some studies and they showed great deasphalting results.