Carbon Footprint and Life Cycle Assessment: Study, Method of Calculation and Applications

In the past century, climate change has caused serious concerns at the national and international levels. One of the main reasons for climate change seems to be the oil industries, especially gas refineries. By using environmental engineering-management techniques and applying them in different industries, researchers all around the world have been able to evaluate several environmental and detrimental impacts of these industries and their products. Life Cycle Assessment and Carbon Footprint are the most useful techniques employed in evaluating the environmental impacts and calculating greenhouse gas emissions. In this paper, a comprehensive definition of Life Cycle Assessment and Carbon Footprint was studied and SimaPro© software was utilized to evaluate Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) and greenhouse gas emissions of the Sarkhoon and Qeshm gas refinery. The summation of three greenhouse gases achieved from the daily production of natural gas i.e., CO۲, CH۴, and N۲O, is the carbon footprint of the refinery, which is ۲,۴۰۰ tCO۲eq per day. In examination of Life Cycle Assessment, three main categories of environmental damages have been investigated. When the environmental impacts of annually emitted greenhouse gases were studied, it became apparent that the industry would reduce the total years of the life span of the staff due to illnesses up to ۴.۴۷% (i.e. lost between ۱ to ۳ years) and causes premature death (Human Health). Also, it was shown that ۵,۴۷۰ acres of forest would be destroyd due to absorb this much emissions (Global Ecosystems) and also, it was illustrated that ۵۵۴ million dollars is required to substitute new energy sources resulting from the depletion of the resources (Natural Resources). This result shows that the cost and serious impact of natural resources is more notable than the two others.