Life Cycle Assessment Study For Two Different Phenol Production Processes

Abstract

Phenol is an important raw material in many branches of industry (petrochemical, pharmaceutical, plastic and pesticidal chemical industry ). This research study on phenol production processes by using two different phenol production processes which are cumene oxidation (the Hock process) and toluene oxidation (the Dow process). In order to study in environmental impacts, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is applied to evaluate environmental impacts of phenol production processes. Environmental impacts are evaluated according to cradle-to-gate approach by using SimaPro 7.1 software for Life Cycle Assessment . Approach by IMPACT 2002+ . The result shows that cumene process is more environmentally favorable than toluene process.