Challenges in applying LCA at the research stage: case study on biotreatment of pollutants in drinking water resources

Introduction

Research projects aiming to develop new technologies, products, and services increasingly use life cycle assessment (LCA) as a means of providing information about the potential for sustainability of the technology under development. While using LCA at this early stage clearly provides benefits in terms of steering decisions towards sustainable choices, this collides with the practicalities of LCA, which is a sophisticated and data-demanding method. In this work we give an overview of the main challenges that the LCA practitioner encounters in such prospective assessments and how they can be overcome, with the example of a case study on biotreatment of water resources.