Cradle-to-Gate Life Cycle Assessment of Zeolite-Modified PAN/PVDF Electrospun Composite Membranes for Cationic Dye Removal: Parametric Analysis of Natural Zeolite Loading

Industrial textile wastewater contaminated with cationic dyes is a persistent environmental problem, and electrospun polyacrylonitrile/polyvinylidene fluoride (PAN/PVDF) nanofiber membranes modified with natural zeolite have emerged as an effective remediation technology. While experimental studies report substantial gains in dye rejection from such modifications, the environmental trade-off of the additional manufacturing burden has not been quantitatively evaluated. Here, we present the first parametric cradle-to-gate Life Cycle Assessment of five zeolite loading scenarios (Ze0 at 0 g to Ze5 at 0.05 g per 50×50 mm2 membrane) using primary experimental data from Arif et al. (2024). The assessment covers six midpoint impact categories (climate change, PM formation, acidification, freshwater and marine eutrophication, water consumption) under two functional units: per m2 of membrane (FU-A) and per kg methylene blue removed (FU-B). Analyses use Brightway 2.5 with a hybrid background database, Monte Carlo uncertainty (1000 iterations) and Sobol global sensitivity analysis (17408 evaluations per output target, 15 parameters). Manufacturing burden (FU-A) increases monotonically with zeolite loading (Ze5/Ze0 ratio of 1.13× for GWP100), whereas function-level impact (FU-B) is non-monotonic with an optimum at Ze3 (approximately 2.652×106 kg CO2-eq/kg MB at the lab-scale, single-needle electrospinning regime modelled here). All headline impact magnitudes reflect this lab-scale regime and are not representative of industrial throughput; continuous or needleless industrial electrospinning is expected to reduce per-m2 energy demand by 1–2 orders of magnitude (Section [sec:results-literature]). The optimum holds with 100.0% probability under parameter uncertainty, and equipment power assumptions (electrospinner, magnetic stirrer) dominate the Sobol ranking for FU-A GWP100 (combined ST>0.9), while grid electricity emerges as the top hotspot across climate, particulate, and acidification categories (92.4% share for GWP). Toxicity-related categories (human toxicity, freshwater ecotoxicity) are excluded from the assessment as a transparent scope limitation. These findings support natural-zeolite-modified electrospun membranes for cationic dye removal while identifying lab-to-industrial scale-up of electrospinning efficiency as the single highest-leverage intervention.