Life Cycle Environmental Impact Analysis Of Hydrogen Peroxide Production By Anthraquinone Method

Chemical industry is the basic industry to promote the development of national economy and improve people’s life,and its sustainable development path is significance at present.In recent years,more and more chemical enterprises began to pay attention to the clean production of products with the increasing awareness of environmental protection.As an environment-friendly inorganic chemical material and fine chemical product,hydrogen peroxide(H2O2)has been widely used in various social production sectors such as sewage treatment,paper bleaching,electronic industry,and medical sterilization.H2O2 is generally regarded as a green pollution-free product in its use phase,but it is not clear whether H2O2 is environmentally friendly as a "cleaning product" at the production stage.In addition,there is no research on environmental risks in the process of H2O2 production in China at present,and there is a lack of effective environmental management measures.Therefore,it is necessary to scientifically and systematically analyze the potential environmental impact of H2O2 production in the whole process and identify key factors.In this study,the life cycle inventory of H2O2 production by anthraquinone method was constructed from "cradle" to "factory gate" based on the principle and framework of ISO 14040 standard.The environmental impact assessment of H2O2 production in whole life was conducted using the localization assessment model.To further enhance the data representativeness,this study selected key factors that contributed significantly to the overall environmental burden of H2O2 production in China,used enterprise integrated data to replace the input of surface inventory of key factors,and conducted the uncertainty analysis to ensure the scientific and robust assessment results,so as to realize the environmental impact assessment of H2O2 production by anthraquinone method at the industry level.The results showed that compared with hydrogen production from coal(S2),from petroleum(S3),from natural gas(S4),H2O2 production from chlor-alkali by-product(S1)can reduce the environmental burden by 27%,11%and 25%in the whole life cycle.Normalization results show that fossil depletion,global warming,water depletion and non-carcinogens categories are major contributors to the environmental impacts of H2O2 production.The contribution of fossil depletion is most prominent at the midpoint level,and its contribution values are 91.01 kg oil eq(S1),136.33 kg oil eq(S2),108.81 kg oil eq(S3)and 125.09 kg oil eq(S4),respectively.At the endpoint level,the total damage value of H2O2 production to resources reached 102.35 $(S1),150.70 $(S2),121.11 $(S3),138.34$(S4).In the process contribution,the potential environmental impact of H2O2 production is dominated by energy consumption(i.e.electricity production and steam preparation)and process water consumption.In terms of the key substance contribution,the main pollutants are greenhouse gases and heavy metals emitted from coal combustion in electricity consumption and H2O2 production.The following measures were proposed to improve the environmental benefits of H2O2 produced by anthraquinone process in this study:(1)Expand the scale of hydrogen by-products in chlor-alkali industrial,increase the proportion of hydrogen supplied from industrial by-products in the process of H2O2 preparation,or use fossil energy to produce hydrogen combined with efficient clean technology;(2)Optimize the power structure,vigorously strengthen the promotion of hydropower,and make full use of clean and renewable energy in coordinating the distribution;(3)Recommended to use renewable fuels(such as biomass)and fully utilize the residual heat generated by waste incineration to further reduce the environmental burden and energy consumption of H2O2 production;(4)Promote the application of air-water coupling cooling technology by reducing water consumption at the source of production to achieve clean production of H2O2 and improve environmental performance;(5)Adjust the overall layout of the H2O2 industry based on resource endowments to rationally allocate production capacity,effectively utilize resources and energy,and enhance interregional coordination and sustainability of the development of the H2O2 industry.