Life Cycle Assessment

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a technology evaluation tool used to guide the sustainable development of commercial and emerging product systems. Prior to commercializing new technologies or products, LCA can serve as a prospective benchmarking tool to understand the environmental tradeoffs of investment. This chapter reviews prospective LCA methods for sustainable design of chemical manufacturing and its role in steering the scale-up of promising methods. We illustrate this case through the emerging method of mechanochemistry.