Oil represents the main energy sources used by mankind. In addition, petroleum products serve as feedstock for several consumer goods, thus playing an important growing role in people’s lives. For this reason there are various software applications designed to do the environmental assessment to see their impact on the environment. Among these is SimaPro software package designed to make a valuable contribution. It is a powerful tool for analyzing the environmental impact of products during their whole life cycle. In this study, it was applied to analyze and evaluate the impacts for Al-Daura refinery for the gasoline and kerosene fuel production. This refinery located in Baghdad, Iraq was analyzed. The results of the life cycle assessment (LCA) show that gasoline has a (single score) of the order of 11.1 point for each 1 cubic meter produce from gasoline fuel compared with 4.83 point for each 1 cubic meter produce from kerosene. Global warming, respiratory inorganics and non-renewable energy were the most effective environmental impacts.
Currently there is a conflict between the nature limits and the aspirations of human beings in this world [
The petroleum industry is considered as a main potential for risks on the ecosystem, and the impact is distributed on different levels: water, soil, air, and as a result all living beings on our earth [
Pollution is accompanied with practically all actions throughout all phases of petrol production, from exploration actions to refining. Large amounts of aerosols, gas emissions, solid waste and wastewater are generated during the petroleum fuel production chain (drilling, production, refining and transporting) [
The process where unrefined petrol is treated and refined into further valuable products e.g. naphtha, gasoline, diesel, asphalt, heating oil, lamp fuel and liquefied petrol gas is referred to as oil refining or petrol refining [
Baghdad is located on the River Tigris in the middle parts of Iraq and it is the capital of Iraq (
The program SimaPro 7 (System for Integrated natural Assessment of Products), created by the Dutch PRé Consultants [
1) Goal and Scope: In this section is the goal and scope are described. This can be done through:
Different aspects of the goal and scope definition are done in this Text fields. This can be later copied and included into the report [
Libraries with standard data which are relevant for the project can be picked in this section [
Data characteristics can be predefined in this software [
2) Parameters describing resources and material uses and emission to air and water is refered to ad “Inventory Analysis”. This covers the whole life cycle of the products or activities; construction; treating; sludge disposal; and all transportation involved. In the LCA a so called normalization process is used for data collection to establish a suitable data base.
3) The basic structure of impact assessment methods in this software is characterization, damage assessment, normalization and weighting and the last three steps are optional according to the ISO standards [
4) For interpretations, a checklist which covers the relevant issues mentioned in the ISO standards is usually used. Observations are filled in when the LCA study is in its final stages and conclusions are made [
The results were mostly not straightforward in favor of material design over the alternative one in LCA they got to be interpreted or weighted. For product design, IMPACT 2002+ methodology and LCA weighting method are used. It had proved to be a powerful tool for designers to aggregate LCA results into easily understandable and user- friendly numbers or units. This is called IMPACT 2002-IMPact Assessment of Chemical Toxics. The processes contributing to those impacts are detailed in
Input consists of resources―water and crude oil for refining process, material (water, fuel oil and gas oil) for steam and electricity generation, (PDC, DMDS, and Sodium hydroxide) for production purpose.
Emission of refining process can be classified into two main groups; emission to air- COX, SOX, H2O and NOX which come from refining process especially from the electricity and steam generation process.
Emissions to water-BOD, COD, SO4, CL, OIL, TDS, S, SS, and Phenol. Those were wastewater (industrial wastewater) characteristics (see
The fourteen environmental impact or midpoint categories in the IMPACT 2002+ are human toxicity (carcinogens and non-carcinogens), respiratory effects, ionizing radiation, ozone layer depletion, photochemical oxidation, aquatic ecotoxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity, terrestrial acidification/nitrification, aquatic acidification, aquatic eutrophication, land occupation, global warming, non-renewable energy and mineral extraction. While the damage categories are human health, ecosystem quality, climate change and resources.
Impact category | Unit | Gasoline Al-Daura refinery | Kerosene, at Al-Daura refinery |
---|---|---|---|
Total | Pt | 11.09088 | 4.834182 |
Aquatic acidification | Pt | - | - |
Aquatic eutrophication | Pt | - | - |
Mineral extraction | Pt | 0.00033 | 0.000139 |
Ozone layer depletion | Pt | 0.001444 | 0.000609 |
Ionizing radiation | Pt | 0.004183 | 0.001762 |
Respiratory organics | Pt | 0.005267 | 0.002219 |
Land occupation | Pt | 0.005373 | 0.002262 |
Aquatic ecotoxicity | Pt | 0.010761 | 0.004536 |
Terrestrial acid/nutri | Pt | 0.023441 | 0.009895 |
Carcinogens | Pt | 0.050733 | 0.021584 |
Non-carcinogens | Pt | 0.058357 | 0.024587 |
Terrestrial ecotoxicity | Pt | 0.368729 | 0.155266 |
Global warming | Pt | 1.161532 | 0.495859 |
Respiratory inorganics | Pt | 1.629976 | 0.688199 |
Non-renewable energy | Pt | 7.770752 | 3.427264 |
IMPACT 2002+ was used to analyze the damage categories. Human health, Ecosystem quality, Climate change and Resources were found to be considered as damage categories (
Contribution analysis is a significant tool used to understand the uncertainty of results. This analysis help in determine the process of significant role in your result. Frequently we have a LCA consists of hundreds different process, but indeed 95% - 99% of results are related to just ten processes, so when using contribution analysis we can focus our attention on these processes.
The contribution analysis ways in SimaPro are two as follow:
1) Contribution analysis section of the result screen (see
2) Graphical representation of the process tree or network: the relative contribution of each procedure can be evaluated by using the tree procedure. This methodology has benefit represented in getting the exact role of the procedure in the life cycle (
Damage category | Unit | Gasoline at Al-Daura refinery | Kerosene, at Al-Daura refinery |
---|---|---|---|
Total | Pt | 11.09088 | 4.834182 |
Ecosystem quality | Pt | 0.408304 | 0.171959 |
Climate change | Pt | 1.161532 | 0.495859 |
Human health | Pt | 1.749961 | 0.73896 |
Resources | Pt | 7.771082 | 3.427403 |
Process | Unit | Gasoline at Al-Daura refinery | Kerosene, at Al-Daura refinery |
---|---|---|---|
Total of all processes | Pt | 11.09088 | 4.834182 |
Refinery gas, at refinery/RER S | Pt | 10.84757 | 4.559665 |
Gasoline at Al-Daura refinery | Pt | 0.214015 | - |
Steam, for chemical processes, at plant/RER S | Pt | 0.025943 | 0.029269 |
Electricity, at refinery/RER S | Pt | 0.002227 | 0.002512 |
Heavy fuel oil, at regional storage/RER S | Pt | 0.001124 | 0.001291 |
Carbon tetrachloride, at plant/RER S | Pt | 3.57E-07 | 4.03E-07 |
Disposal, refinery sludge, 89.5% water, to sanitary landfill/CH S | Pt | 5.09E-08 | 5.74E-08 |
Dimethyl sulphate, at plant/RER S | Pt | 7.02E-09 | 5.15E-09 |
Sodium hydroxide, 50% in H2O, production mix, at plant/RER S | Pt | 2.49E-09 | 2.81E-09 |
Kerosene, at Al-Daura refinery | Pt | - | 0.241445 |
In this research, Simapro7 software was used to evaluate environmental indicators for gasoline and kerosene production in Al-Daura refinery. For this purpose, the IMPACT 2002+ was applied. The results indicated that the single-score on gasoline production was 11.1 Pt compared with 4.83 Pt for kerosene. The most environmental impact potential was global warming, respiratory in organics and non-renewable energy.
Alanbari, M.A., Rahman, I., Al-Ansari, N. and Knutsson, S. (2016) Comparison of Potential Environmental Impacts on the Production of Gasoline and Kerosene, Al-Daura Refinery, Bagh- dad, Iraq. Engineering, 8, 767-776. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/eng.2016.811069