Research on environmental load during the LNG receiving terminals under the dynamic LCA framework

The large-scale deployment of LNG receiving terminals has led to a continuous increase in their environmental burden. Unlike previous approaches that assumed an annual average temperature or focused solely on a single process, this study established a life cycle assessment (LCA) framework by integrating dynamic environmental parameters to perform a unit-based analysis and characterize the environmental burden of LNG receiving terminals. The results show that the contribution of the regasification unit to the total environmental burden fluctuates significantly (19.04–43%); SCV exhibits a high and stable annual environmental burden, with monthly fluctuations of 0.72–5.66%, whereas integrated regasification systems follow a pattern of high levels early in the year, low levels in mid-year, and a recovery toward year-end, with most indicators fluctuating within 0.21–58.02%. At the midpoint level, marine aquatic ecotoxicity was the most significantly affected, accounting for 61.84–89.34% of the total burden. At the endpoint damage, human health is the most severely affected domain, representing 87.19–89.90% of the total damage. Among the core indicators, direct emissions dominate only in the SCV within the regasification unit. For the combined ORV and SCV systems, 82.04–90.12% of the emissions are indirect. Moreover, the emissions from the other units at the receiving terminal are also indirect. The dynamic LCA analysis of the receiving terminal identifies the patterns of the environmental burden and aligns more closely with real engineering conditions.