BITS Faculty Publications

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Author: search.filters.author.Raghuvanshi, SmitaSubject: search.filters.subject.Life cycle assessment (LCA)

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    Sustainable CO2 bio-mitigation: a life cycle perspective on chemolithotrophic conversion in bubble column bioreactors
    (RSC, 2025-09) Gupta, Suresh; Raghuvanshi, Smita
    The urgent need for low-carbon energy alternatives has intensified interest in sustainable biofuel production pathways. This study presents a comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of a chemolithotrophic bacterial platform for simultaneous CO2 mitigation and biodiesel production using Bacillus cereus SSLMC2 cultivated in 10 and 20 L bubble column bioreactors. Unlike phototrophic systems, this process leverages light-independent bacterial metabolism, offering year-round operation, high biomass yield, and compatibility with flue gas as a carbon source. Experimental data were integrated with LCA modeling using Umberto NXT Universal software and the ReCiPe 2016 and CML baseline methods to quantify environmental impacts across cultivation, biomass harvesting, lipid extraction, and transesterification stages. The results identify dewatering and homogenization as major environmental hotspots, contributing significantly to climate change, fossil depletion, and human toxicity categories. Endpoint analysis revealed human health and resource availability as the most impacted areas, primarily due to electricity use and chemical inputs. Cumulative energy demand assessments confirmed that scale-up from 10 to 20 L does not proportionally increase energy use, suggesting promising scalability. Recommendations include replacing centrifugation with membrane-based dewatering, solvent recovery systems, integration of renewable energy, and recycling of CO2 and water. This is the first LCA study to evaluate chemolithotrophic CO2 bio-mitigation coupled with biodiesel production at pilot scale using empirical data. The findings provide critical insights for optimizing microbial biorefineries and support the development of scalable, environmentally efficient carbon capture and utilization technologies.
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    Comparative Study Using Life Cycle Approach for the Biodiesel Production from Microalgae Grown in Wastewater and Fresh Water
    (Elsevier, 2018) Sangwan, Kuldip Singh; Raghuvanshi, Smita
    Use of bio fuels is a sustainable solution in the current energy scenario, which is marked by unsustainable use of fossil fuels. Production of biodiesel requires microalgae as feedstock. The micro algae require nutrients, CO2 & light source for its growth. An approach where waste water treatment plant can act as source of nutrients for the growth of microalgae would be beneficial. Hence the present work was carried out to understand the life cycle assessment of biodiesel production from microalgae grown in waste water and associated impacts compared with biodiesel production from fresh water. The system boundary considered in the process includes cultivation of microalgae, flocculation, centrifugation, extraction, and transesterification. The functional unit considered for the study is 1 MJ of energy produced from biodiesel. The life cycle assessments (LCA) for the present case was carried out using Umberto NXT software and inventory was taken from Eco invent database v3.0 and literature. Results has shown that the microalgae grown in waste water requires lesser energy as compared to algae grown in fresh water.
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    Life Cycle Assessment of Filtration Systems of Reverse Osmosis Units: A Case Study of a University Campus
    (Elsevier, 2016) Sangwan, Kuldip Singh; Raghuvanshi, Smita
    Environmental concerns are gaining importance in ground water resource management. Reverse osmosis (RO) systems are commonly used for filtration of surface and ground water for domestic and commercial purposes. This study aims to analyze the environmental impacts of electricity, fresh water and material consumption in various types of RO systems. The evaluation tool used for this study is life cycle assessment (LCA) and for this purpose Umberto NXT Universal software with Eco-invent version 3.0 database has been utilized. The inventory analysis has been done for RO systems of four different capacities, viz 25, 50, 250, and 500 liters per hour (LPH). This research also provides comparison of quantitative impacts of different capacity RO systems. All inclusive, the study presents an insight into the environmental impacts of various RO systems used in India and also discuss the alternative technologies for filtration of surface and ground water.
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    Waste Water Treatment Plant Life Cycle Assessment: Treatment Process to Reuse of Water
    (Elsevier, 2017) Sangwan, Kuldip Singh; Raghuvanshi, Smita
    This paper presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) of waste water treatment plant (WWTP) in a university campus in India. Various emissions coming from the WWTP along with their impact factors are analyzed using a LCA software Umberto NXT Universal utilizing Eco-invent database v3.0. It has been found that the recycled water from the plant provides positive impact on the assessed categories. Effect of treatment system is overriding the effect of recycled water in other categories like terrestrial eco-toxicity potential, global warming potential, particulate matter formation, fossil depletion potential, etc. However, the social effect of untreated sewer and environmental effect of compost produced by the system have not been studied.