ABSTRACT
An environmental assessment applied to a process or biorefinery should consider the important aspects such as flows of feedstock, operating conditions, and land use, among others, in order to define the limits and goals of environmental analysis and to know the possible bottlenecks of the system. This chapter provides an overview of methodological approaches that are applied to biorefinery type of systems to assess the environmental impact of a product. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used to calculate the environmental burdens of complex and multidisciplinary processes. This method can be applied to sectors such as building, agriculture, transport, and engineering, among others. In LCA, the data compilation and collection are the most challenging, and work- and time-consuming steps, but it is the key to obtain useful data. The interpretation of results is the last step in an LCA, in which the results obtained in life cycle inventory (LCI) and LCIA are grouped and analyzed in order to generate decision elements.
