Brightcon 2025, hackathon & courses in Grenoble and online

Mitigating climate change requires the development of new chemical processes (Shukla et al., 2022). Confirming their climate benefits requires life cycle assessment (LCA). Still, in practice, LCAs of chemical processes are often conducted by manually extracting data from process simulation software and transferring it to LCA tools (Köck et al., 2023). This manual approach is time-consuming, susceptible to human error (Azzaro-Pantel et al., 2022), and may overlook process flows that appear negligible but can substantially affect the environmental impacts (Rosental et al., 2020).
Here, we present the tool ALCHEMIA (Automated Life Cycle extraction from cHEMical process models Into Assessments) that addresses these challenges by automatically connecting chemical process simulations with the Brightway environment (Mutel, 2017). A graphical user interface facilitates mapping process streams to life cycle inventories, while data handling is performed in the background.
We demonstrate the tool based on bio-based and $\text{CO}_2$-based process studies available in the literature. These studies are implemented in several flow sheeting software packages, including Aspen Plus, Aspen HYSYS, and AVEVA Process Simulation. We show the rapid generation of LCA results based on existing process simulation studies and highlight the importance of holistic LCA to account for all relevant streams.
Overall, ALCHEMIA streamlines data handling in LCA of chemical process simulations by unlocking automated data transfer to the LCA software environment Brightway.

References
P. R. Shukla, et al., 2022, Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA)
B. Köck, et al., 2023, Sustainability 15(6), 5531
C. Azzaro-Pantel, et al., 2022, Food and Bioproducts Processing 131, 40–59
M. Rosental, et al., 2020, Front. Clim. 2, 586199
C. Mutel, 2017, JOSS 2(12), 236