From Lab to Industrial Scale: Engineering-based Prospective Scaling for the LCA of Bio-based Nanocellulose Electrodes

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Poster Number:  18 

Main Presenter:    Maria Iordanoglou 

Co-Authors:   Aleix Martí Maymó     Fabiola Vilaseca Morera      Alba Bala                                    

Electrocardiography (ECG) is a fundamental practice in modern healthcare which is utilizing billions of single-use silver/silver chloride (Ag/AgCl) electrodes annually. This drives continuous extraction of non-renewable resources and generates significant amounts of non-recyclable waste. As climate change influences the health vulnerability of populations, rising electrode demand will further increase associated carbon emissions. Therefore, substituting conventional electrode materials with sustainable, conductive nanocellulose presents an opportunity for life cycle innovation towards healthcare decarbonization.
This study evaluates the environmental performance of a novel nanocellulose-based electrode. The primary goal is to identify hotspots and quantify emission reduction potentials across two transitions: the material shift from fossil- and mineral-based to bio-based components, and the scale-up from laboratory prototypes to industrial scale production.
A cradle-to-grave Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was conducted following ISO 14040/14044 standards using SimaPro 10.2 and the Ecoinvent 3.11 database. The functional unit is one rapid ECG recording. Two nanocellulose fabrication pathways were modeled: TEMPO-mediated oxidation and enzymatic reaction. To ensure a realistic comparison, laboratory data were scaled up to industrial levels through engineering-based prospective scaling. While material inputs were scaled linearly, energy inputs were modeled using power-rating equations to calculate specific energy consumptions of industrial-scale batches. These values applied to the laboratory flows, treating them as fractions of the larger batch, and therefore mitigating the overestimation caused by the inherent energy inefficiencies of laboratory processing. The Environmental Footprint (EF) 3.1 method was applied for impact assessment.
Preliminary results show that the industrial scale nanocellulose electrode achieves a 70% reduction in carbon emissions compared to commercial Ag/AgCl alternatives. The bio-based alternative also demonstrates significant improvement across the Resource Use and Human Toxicity categories. The scaled-up model indicates a 90% reduction in carbon emissions compared to the laboratory scale, primarily due to the prospective optimization of the energy-intensive film-drying process.
This research demonstrates that engineering-based prospective scaling is important for mitigating the laboratory-scale bias that often discards emerging green technologies in LCA. By bridging the gap between laboratory and industry scale, this work quantifies the environmental benefits of bio-based electrodes across multiple impact categories. These findings showcase that nanocellulose is a key material for sustainable cardiac monitoring.

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