Energetic and environmental evaluation of titanium dioxide nanoparticles

The methods of energy, exergy, and life cycle analysis are applied to a new nano-manufacturing process producing 40 nm titanium dioxide particles. The use of identical boundaries for each analysis allows for direct comparison of the results from each method. It was found that the thermodynamic methods identify spray hydrolysis as a significant sink in the process and life cycle analysis shows it to be the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. Despite this agreement, there are some discrepancies between methods, and exergy analysis appears to give additional information that energy analysis overlooks. Of course the optimal method for a given application depends on the intended goals of the analysis.