Improving odour assessment in LCA - the odour footprint

• Purpose Odour is an important aspect of systems for humanand agricultural waste management and many technologiesare developed with the sole purpose of reducing odour.Compared with greenhouse gas assessment and the assessmentof toxicity, odour assessment has received little attentionin the life cycle assessment (LCA) community. This articleaims to redress this.Methods Firstly, a framework for the assessment of odourimpacts in LCA was developed considering the classicalLCA framework of emissions, midpoint and endpoint indicators.This suggested that an odour footprint midpoint indicatorwas worth striving for. An approach to calculating an arealindicator we call “odour footprint”, which considers the odourdetection threshold, the diffusion rate and the kinetics ofdegradation of odourants, was implemented in MATLAB.We demonstrated the use of the characterisation factors wecalculated in a case study based on odour removal technologyapplied to a pig barn.Results and discussion We produced a list of 33 linear characterisation factors based on hydrogen sulphide equivalents, analogous to the linear carbon dioxide equivalency factors in use in carbon footprinting, or the dichlorobenzene equivalency factors developed for assessment of toxic impacts in LCA. Like the latter, this odour footprint method does not take local populations and exposure pathway analysis into account—its intent is not to assess regulatory compliance or detailed design. The case study showed that despite the need for materials and energy, large factor reductions in odour footprint andeutrophication potential were achieved at the cost of a smaller factor increase in greenhouse emissions.Conclusions The odour footprint method is proposed as animprovement on the established midpoint method for odourassessment in LCA. Unlike it, the method presented hereconsiders the persistence of odourants. Over time, we hopeto increase the number of characterised odourants, enablinganalysts to perform simple site-generic LCA on systems withodourant emissions.

Subject headings

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Samhällsbyggnadsteknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Civil Engineering (hsv//eng)

LANTBRUKSVETENSKAPER  -- Annan lantbruksvetenskap -- Miljö- och naturvårdsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES  -- Other Agricultural Sciences -- Environmental Sciences related to Agriculture and Land-use (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Miljöbioteknik -- Biosanering (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Environmental Biotechnology -- Bioremediation (hsv//eng)

Keyword

odour

LCIA

Footprint

Odor

Midpoint indicator

swine

Publication and Content Type

art (subject category)

ref (subject category)