Avaliação do ciclo de vida de poli(líquidos iônicos) imidazólicos sintetizados por fotopolimerização em manufatura aditiva

Abstract

This work presents a “cradle-to-gate” Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of 3Dprinting polymerisable ionic liquids (PILs) using stereolithography apparathus. Firstly, in order to provide an up-to-date overview on the currently state-of-the-art involving the life cycle assessment (LCA) studies on ionic liquids (ILs) a review on the subject was employed. This review recommends a list of issues that need further precision for application of LCA to evaluate ILs processes, such as: i) access to comprehensive and adequate life cycle inventory and ii) development and inclusion of characterization factors for IL impacts. Also, some good practices in LCA of IL were identified and are recommended. Later, this work focused on the employment of the 3-butyl-1-vinylimidazolium [BVim] cation, with the non-coordinating and hydrophobic bis(trifluoromethane)sulfonimide [NTf2]- anion as the counter anion. The results indicate that the printing process does not significantly exacerbate the environmental impacts. The polymerisable monomer IL has similar impact compared to the analogous non-polymerisable 3-butyl-1-methylimidazolium [NTf2]- IL, thus potentially allowing for the more efficient use of the IL properties by immobilization in solid phases. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that switching the anion from [NTf2]- to dicyanamide [N(CN2)]- significantly decreases the impacts in all categories evaluated for PIL production. This work represents the first phase toward quantitative LCA data generation for the process of 3D-printing IL, which will be great support for decision making during design of PIL 3D-printing processes at a laboratory scale.