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.
The study compared bacterial treatment of BAM-contaminated groundwater in Denmark with granular activated carbon and relocation of the polluted well. It used consequential LCA, focusing on processes affected by the treatment choice. Pilot-scale data required careful interpretation: replacing unoptimised inoculum-production data with an industrial yeast-production surrogate substantially improved the climate results. Carrier-material choices also influenced performance, with quartz sand giving lower climate impacts than expanded clay.
Well relocation performed best under assumptions of comparable pumping energy and material inputs, but may be impractical where contamination is widespread. The authors therefore present research-stage LCA as a way to identify hotspots and guide technology development. High uncertainty and limited scale-up data mean the results support an initial comparison rather than strong claims about full-scale performance.
