Jocelyn Morrison

 Faculty of Science and Engineering | Bachelor Circular Engineering

Focused Life Cycle Assessment of Avantium’s monomer product furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA)

Jocelyn's elevator pitch
The future of plastics is sustainable, and Avantium is leading the way! This Dutch company develops technologies to convert renewable feedstocks into furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA), the building block of Polyethylene Furanoate (PEF)—a bio-based alternative to Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET). For my thesis, I conducted a gate-to-gate Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the FDCA production process, analysing emissions, energy consumption, waste, and wastewater streams. The results confirmed that PEF has a better environmental performance than fossil-based plastics. Furthermore, the data was analysed to develop sustainability improvements for the process. The LCA tool developed can also be reused to assess future production sites.