Title: Life cycle assessment of oil storage unit in India

Authors: Shilpi Shrivastava; Seema Unnikrishnan

Addresses: Center for Environmental Studies, National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai, India ' Center for Environmental Studies, National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai, India

Abstract: In spite of so many technological innovations, India is still dependent on other countries for fulfilling the demand for oil. In the oil process chain, oil refineries are generally considered to be the most polluting phase but oil storage units also have an adverse impact on the environment. Since there is no life cycle assessment (LCA) study focusing on the storage units in India, this study will help in identifying the potential environmental hotspots which have the highest impact on the environment. The life cycle phases considered in the study are transportation (from the refinery to storage tanks), storage and dispatch (from storage tanks to fuel stations) of finished fuel. For impact assessment SimaPro v7 and Ecoinvent database is used. The results show that, in the oil storage unit, the highest impact is from the transportation phase. Transportation is causing a serious threat to the environment because conventional fuels are being used for transportation which is mainly responsible for the major impact categories identified. [Received: October 8, 2019; Accepted: March 7, 2020]

Keywords: life cycle assessment; LCA; oil storage units; transportation; environmental impact; fuels; India; SimaPro; emissions; impact categories; climate change.

DOI: 10.1504/IJOGCT.2021.114861

International Journal of Oil, Gas and Coal Technology, 2021 Vol.27 No.1, pp.95 - 110

Received: 08 Oct 2019
Accepted: 07 Mar 2020
Published online: 10 May 2021 *

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