Integrating Life-Cycle Assessment into Automotive Manufacturing—A Review-Based Framework to Measure the Ecological Performance of Production Technologies

2018 ◽  
pp. 45-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malte Gebler ◽  
Felipe Cerdas ◽  
Alexander Kaluza ◽  
Roman Meininghaus ◽  
Christoph Herrmann
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Automotive Manufacturing ◽  
Ecological Performance ◽  
Production Technologies

scholarly journals Environmental Life-Cycle Assessment of Arable Crop Production Technologies Compared to Different Harvesting Work Systems in Short Rotation Energy Plantations

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 55-68
Author(s):  
András Polgár ◽  
Zoltán Kovács ◽  
Veronika Elekné Fodor ◽  
András Bidló
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Crop Production ◽  
Short Rotation ◽  
Environmental Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Arable Crop ◽  
Production Technologies ◽  
Energy Plantations ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Rotation Energy

Abstract Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) was developed as a tool for sustainable, decision-supporting environmental management. Applying agricultural sector-LCA in order to achieve both internal (comparative) and external (efficiency enhancing) benefits is a priority. Since the life-cycle assessment of products and processes attracts great interest, applying the method in agriculture is relevant. Our study undertakes a comparative environmental life-cycle assessment (LCA) of local arable crop production technologies used for the main cultivated plants: maize, sunflower, lucerne, cereals, and canola (environmental data in the territorial approach calculated on a 1 ha unit and in the quantitative approach calculated on 1 t of produce). We prepared an environmental inventory of the arable crop production technologies, constructed the life-cycle models, and executed the impact assessment. We also compiled an environmental ranking of technologies. In the impact interpretation, we compared the results with the values of short rotation energy plantations in each impact category. We analysed carbon footprints closely. The obtained results help better assess environmental impacts, climate risks, and climate change as they pertain to arable crop production technologies, which advances the selection of appropriate technologies adjusted to environmental sensitivities.

Recent Developments on Life Cycle Assessment of Building Materials

2020 ◽  
Vol 993 ◽  
pp. 1534-1544
Author(s):  
Ning Liu ◽  
Yu Liu ◽  
Xian Zheng Gong ◽  
Li Wei Hao ◽  
Feng Gao ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Glass Ceramics ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Ecological Design ◽  
Lca Case Studies ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Production Technologies ◽  
Green Manufacture

In recent years, the building materials industry in China has made great progress in the R&D of energy conservation, emission reduction and cleaner production technologies, in order to implement sustainable development policy. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is one of the mainstream method to analyze the environmental impact of product during its life cycle, which plays an important role on ecological design of building materials and development of green manufacture technology in recent year. This paper reviewed the LCA studies of building materials. Firstly, the development of China's building materials industry and technical framework of LCA standardized by ISO14040/14044 were introduced. Moreover, the typical LCA case studies of cement, glass, ceramics, wall materials, insulation materials and other building materials were reviewed. At last, some prospects for future research and development in this field were put forward.

scholarly journals Gate-to-Gate Life Cycle Assessment for Determining Carbon Footprint of Catalytic Converter Assembly Process

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-24
Author(s):  
A. N. Mustfizul Karim ◽  
Emrul Kays ◽  
Nur Aisyah Akmal Binti Rosland ◽  
Saravanan Tanjong Tuan
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Carbon Footprint ◽  
Environmental Concern ◽  
Catalytic Converter ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Resource Base ◽  
Automotive Manufacturing ◽  
Real Life Data

With the pursuit of embracing the circular economy, having upward trend in vehicle sales and environmental concern, sustainability has become an imperative part of the global automotive manufacturing strategies. One of the tactics to achieve this sustainable goal is to conserve and enhance the resource base by salvaging the embedded values from end-of-life product and for which, the remanufacturing can be considered as one of the most prominent epitome. Even though many of the auto parts like engine, transmissions, starters, alternators and etc. have been assessed for remanufacturability since last few decades, being a major component of a car body the Catalytic Converter (CC) still remains unfocused in literature. However, to examine the remanufacturability of CC, a comprehensive study for assessing its economic, social, and environmental impact is inevitable. Therefore, with an underlying aim of designing the remanufacturable CC, in this endeavour an attempt has made to evaluate the environmental impact of its welding operations by means of energy consumption through gate-to-gate life cycle assessment. Real life data are collected from a Local Malaysian CC manufacturer. The obtained results show that the welding section has a carbon footprint of 0.203 kgCO2e/unit with major emission coming from the plasma arc welding. In addition to that, it is also observed that the value of carbon footprint is not only sensitive to the emission factor and processing time, but also it is responsive to the nature of the processing operations. Certainly, this observation will motivate to change the product design from the prospect of remanufacturing.

Hybrid Input-Output Life Cycle Assessment of First- and Second-Generation Ethanol Production Technologies in Brazil

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 764-774 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcos D. B. Watanabe ◽  
Mateus F. Chagas ◽  
Otávio Cavalett ◽  
Joaquim J. M. Guilhoto ◽  
W. Michael Griffin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Ethanol Production ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Input Output ◽  
Production Technologies ◽  
First And Second Generation ◽  
Second Generation Ethanol

scholarly journals Comparing Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of Salmonid Aquaculture Production Systems: Status and Perspectives

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 2517 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaspard Philis ◽  
Friederike Ziegler ◽  
Lars Christian Gansel ◽  
Mona Dverdal Jansen ◽  
Erik Olav Gracey ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Energy Demand ◽  
Production Systems ◽  
Open Systems ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Feed Conversion ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Production Technologies

Aquaculture is the fastest growing food sector worldwide, mostly driven by a steadily increasing protein demand. In response to growing ecological concerns, life cycle assessment (LCA) emerged as a key environmental tool to measure the impacts of various production systems, including aquaculture. In this review, we focused on farmed salmonids to perform an in-depth analysis, investigating methodologies and comparing results of LCA studies of this finfish family in relation to species and production technologies. Identifying the environmental strengths and weaknesses of salmonid production technologies is central to ensure that industrial actors and policymakers make informed choices to take the production of this important marine livestock to a more sustainable path. Three critical aspects of salmonid LCAs were studied based on 24 articles and reports: (1) Methodological application, (2) construction of inventories, and (3) comparison of production technologies across studies. Our first assessment provides an overview and compares important methodological choices. The second analysis maps the main foreground and background data sources, as well as the state of process inclusion and exclusion. In the third section, a first attempt to compare life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) and feed conversion ratio (FCR) data across production technologies was conducted using a single factor statistical protocol. Overall, findings suggested a lack of methodological completeness and reporting in the literature and demonstrated that inventories suffered from incomplete description and partial disclosure. Our attempt to compare LCA results across studies was challenging due to confounding factors and poor data availability, but useful as a first step in highlighting the importance of production technology for salmonids. In groups where the data was robust enough for statistical comparison, both differences and mean equalities were identified, allowing ranking of technology clusters based on their average scores. We statistically demonstrated that sea-based systems outperform land-based technology in terms of energy demand and that sea-based systems have a generally higher FCR than land-based ones. Cross-study analytics also strongly suggest that open systems generate on average more eutrophying emissions than closed designs. We further discuss how to overcome bottlenecks currently hampering such LCA meta-analysis. Arguments are made in favor of further developing cross-study LCA analysis, particularly by increasing the number of salmonid LCA available (to improve sample sizes) and by reforming in-depth LCA practices to enable full reproducibility and greater access to inventory data.

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