BioSTEAM-LCA: An Integrated Modeling Framework for Agile Life Cycle Assessment of Biorefineries under Uncertainty

Biorefineries will play a critical
role in sustainable bioeconomies,
but projections of their environmental impacts vary widely. A core
challenge with life cycle assessments (LCAs) of biorefineries is that
they are often disconnected from biorefinery design, simulation, and
techno-economic analysis (TEA). This lack of integration is a barrier
to early stage technology and process evaluations, reducing consistency
and transparency across sustainability indicators while limiting our
understanding of the relative importance of individual factors (e.g.,
design decisions, greenhouse gas emission accounting procedures),
how these factors interact, and trade-offs or synergies with process
economics. In this study, we propose a new agile LCA framework, BioSTEAM-LCA,
which layers onto BioSTEAM (Biorefinery Simulation and Techno-Economic
Analysis Modules, which automates biorefinery design, simulation,
and TEA) to characterize the environmental impacts of biorefineries
across a landscape of designs, technology performance assumptions,
and contexts. Inventory databases and impact assessment methods are
integrated to enable flexible user defined LCA system models, and
the implications of uncertainties throughout the production system
are characterized via Monte Carlo simulation. To demonstrate the capabilities
of BioSTEAM-LCA, we present a case study for sugarcane ethanol production.
Overall, BioSTEAM-LCA enables computationally efficient, agile gate-to-gate
LCA to evaluate biorefinery processes, the production of candidate
biofuels and bioproducts, and trade-offs among productivity, economics,
and environmental impacts under uncertainty.