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Mathematical Optimisation of Life-Cycle Assessment Models

Introduction

Life-cycle assessment models consist of a network of processes and flows that describe the full life-cycle of a industrial process. Often one can choose how the network is constructed in order to deliver a particular product or service.

This project focuses on how we can minimise the environmental impact and cost of generating a product or service using an openLCA (http://www.openlca.org) database of component processes and flows.

The optimisation problem is solved using Python and pyomo in a Python packaged called mola. The package is named after the ocean sunfish shown below.

Mola mola: Ocean sunfish

Repository

The code repository contains two Python packages and a collection of Jupyter Notebooks.

• The mola (Mathematical Optimisation for Life-cycle Assessment) package contains a collection of Python classes and functions to carry out the optimisation of life-cycle assessment in a Python script or a Jupyter notebook.

• The molaqt package is a QT front-end to the mola package. It allows a user to configure an optimisation problem using a GUI and then obtain the results using a solver.

• The notebooks directory contains a collection of Jupyter notebooks that describe Toy optimisation problems that illustrate the use of the mola package.