Life cycle environmental impacts of graphene production

When 

6 October 2022 14:00 - 14:45

Abstract

The discovery of graphene has opened significant innovation possibilities across numerous fields including electronics, healthcare, composite materials, and renewable energy.  

Whilst these innovations can bring meaningful improvements to our quality of life and help us address major societal challenges we currently face, there is a need to ensure that solutions are developed in a sustainable way to avoid burden shifting, i.e. tackling one problem at the expense of others.  

To achieve this, we must adopt what is known as a life cycle thinking approach, where every aspect of the life cycle of graphene-based materials is assessed using suitable metrics, i.e. from the extraction of the carbon source and preparation methods, to the application of these materials and their fate at their end-of-life.  

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an environmental management tool that quantifies and translates environmental burdens into potential impacts, e.g. greenhouse gas emissions into global warming potential, and is widely used in the environmental sustainability assessment of products, processes or activities throughout their life cycle.  

Although several LCA studies of graphene-based materials can be found in the literature, which have looked at the global warming potential and primary energy demand of main production processes and few applications, none of these studies have considered specific waste management options for graphene.  

Moreover, these studies have mostly relied on experimental data at the laboratory scale or generic data and assumptions due to the lack of access to industrial scale data, which can be attributed to the relative novelty of these processes (among other factors).