A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
Using Life Cycle Assessment as a Tool to Evaluate and Make Recommendations for Future Biopharmaceutical Manufacture
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a well-regarded methodology used to evaluate the environmental impacts of a system, essential to supporting the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals. Due to the increasing need for companies to act more environmentally friendly, employing LCA to systematically and quantitatively evaluate their products and processes would be necessary. To date, little LCA work has been applied to biopharmaceutical production; this may be due to a lack of inputs and outputs data, methodology available or knowledge related to LCA. Hence, this project sought to develop guidance to apply LCA to biopharmaceutical processes, considering questions that companies would typically require to address. To this end, the LCA methodology was operationalised to the production of a major biopharmaceutical product, 6-APA, to demonstrate the advantages and limitations of LCA. As 6-APA represents the largest production mass output of the industry, industry-wide practical steps and policy considerations to reduce environmental impacts were drawn. A series of LCA analyses, including sensitivity analyses, hot-spot analyses, scenario analyses and comparative study were conducted on the "average" 6-APA manufacturing process, modelled with input including that from industry contacts. This set of analyses ensured that recommendations drawn from the LCA study considered all factors, including the robustness and significance of results and the relationship between process parameters, specifically product titre, scale, location, and environmental impacts. Hot-spot analysis was conducted on nine scenarios where 6-APA production was considered to locate in different countries. Results concurred that the highest impacts in most environmental impact categories were derived from the supply of essential production materials and the electricity mix. This underscored the importance of considering the source (or the choice of suppliers) for the process inputs. The normalisation methodology was applied to estimate the relative ...
Using Life Cycle Assessment as a Tool to Evaluate and Make Recommendations for Future Biopharmaceutical Manufacture
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a well-regarded methodology used to evaluate the environmental impacts of a system, essential to supporting the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals. Due to the increasing need for companies to act more environmentally friendly, employing LCA to systematically and quantitatively evaluate their products and processes would be necessary. To date, little LCA work has been applied to biopharmaceutical production; this may be due to a lack of inputs and outputs data, methodology available or knowledge related to LCA. Hence, this project sought to develop guidance to apply LCA to biopharmaceutical processes, considering questions that companies would typically require to address. To this end, the LCA methodology was operationalised to the production of a major biopharmaceutical product, 6-APA, to demonstrate the advantages and limitations of LCA. As 6-APA represents the largest production mass output of the industry, industry-wide practical steps and policy considerations to reduce environmental impacts were drawn. A series of LCA analyses, including sensitivity analyses, hot-spot analyses, scenario analyses and comparative study were conducted on the "average" 6-APA manufacturing process, modelled with input including that from industry contacts. This set of analyses ensured that recommendations drawn from the LCA study considered all factors, including the robustness and significance of results and the relationship between process parameters, specifically product titre, scale, location, and environmental impacts. Hot-spot analysis was conducted on nine scenarios where 6-APA production was considered to locate in different countries. Results concurred that the highest impacts in most environmental impact categories were derived from the supply of essential production materials and the electricity mix. This underscored the importance of considering the source (or the choice of suppliers) for the process inputs. The normalisation methodology was applied to estimate the relative ...
Using Life Cycle Assessment as a Tool to Evaluate and Make Recommendations for Future Biopharmaceutical Manufacture
Chau, Charnett (author) / Titchener-Hooker, N / Lettieri, P
2021-08-28
Masters thesis, UCL (University College London).
Theses
Electronic Resource
English
DDC:
690