Coolants based on native fat ester – comparative life cycle assessment

Three water-immiscible coolants are compared due to their environmental burdens using LCA methodology. Main focus lies on an animal fat ester based product that is compared to a plant seed oil (rape) based ester and a mineral oil product. All indicators show that the animal fat product causes the lowest potential impact on the environment, whereas results for plant seed ester based and conventional coolants are ambiguous and do not allow for a clear preference of the one or the other. Advantage of native ester products is very clear in energy balance and abiotic resource depletion but in some impact categories scores of plant seed esters clearly exceed those of mineral oil.