Life cycle assessment of carbon aerogel derived from organic wastes

In recent years, scientific research has shown that the interest in the use of sustainable materials has increased considerably and carbon aerogels produced from biomass based waste have become a focal point as a sustainable alternative. This thesis aims to assess the environmental impacts of carbon aerogel derived from biomass waste (waste pomegranate peels) using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. In the study the declared unit is "1 g carbon aerogel production" and the system boundary is based on the "cradle to gate" approach. Foreground data was obtained from the experimental process and background data was obtained from the Ecoinvent (V.3.10) database integrated into the licensed SimaPro 9.6 PhD software. Resorcinol/Formaldehyde (RF) based carbon aerogel was selected to compare the environmental impacts of carbon aerogel production from biomass waste and commercially produced carbon aerogel production. As a result of the study, the environmental impacts of carbon aerogel produced from pomegranate peels were found to be mostly driven by electricity consumption and outperformed RF based carbon aerogel in all environmental impact categories. The comparative LCA results were supported by uncertainty and sensitivity analyses, and increasing the proportion of renewable energy in the electricity mix provided a clearer picture of the impacts from the feedstock. Furthermore, analyses with CML and ReCiPe Midpoint (H) impact assessment methods yielded parallel results, reinforcing the methodological consistency of the results.