Environmental life-cycle assessment of a military explosive production unit: A preliminary approach

Abstract

It is generally known that plants of the chemical industry have great potential to generate environmental impacts and health hazards. However, systematic measurements of these impacts are not common. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool that allows quantitative environmental impacts evaluation and it was applied in a preliminary approach to analyze selected subsystems in a RDX (1,3,5-trinitroperhydro-1,3,5-triazine) military production unit. LCA was applied through analysis of the plant data in the free software OpenLCA, using ELCD (European Reference Life Cycle Database) and the TRACI (Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and other environmental Impacts) method. As a result, the following impact categories were assessed: acidification, ecotoxicity, eutrophication, global warming, human health, ozone depletion, photochemical oxidation and resource depletion.