scholarly journals Life cycle assessment and eco-efficiency Indicator for ulos weaving using loom machine in Toba Samosir Regency of North Sumatra

2018 ◽  
Vol 74 ◽  
pp. 05002
Author(s):  
Yuli Yanthi Siagian ◽  
Rizal Sinaga ◽  
Christoper Sinaga ◽  
Yosef Manik

Toba Samosir Regency is one of the centers of ulos weaving in North Sumatera. Most of the weaving processes are carried out traditionally by small-size enterprises. However, it is identified that there are 8 ulos weaving industries that utilize loom machine. To date, no holistic environmental impact assessment has yet been conducted on weaving industry in Toba Samosir. This study aims to assess potential environmental impact caused by weaving industry in Toba Samosir. The scope of this study covers gate-to-gate stages in ulos production, consisting mangiran, washing, dipping, drying, dying, boiling, sun-drying, weaving, and manirat. The functional unit of this study is 182 kg of ulos, representing one batch of production. The assessments are conducted by two approaches; these are Life Cycle Assessment and Eco-efficiency Index measurement. The LCA modeling and computation of environmental impacts are aided by openLCA software. From LCA, it is revealed that the potential environmental impacts associated with ulos weaving are Eutrophication Potential (5.28E+01 kg PO4 eq - 8.41E+01 kg PO4 eq), Climate Change Potential (7.17E+02 kg CO2 eq - 5.74E+02 kg CO2 eq), and Photochemical Oxidation Potential (3.40E+00 kg CFC-11 eq - 4.68E+01 kg CFC-11 eq). The major stressors causing these impacts are using firewood. The calculation result of Eco-Efficiency Index (EEI) for weaving industry in Toba Samosir Regency falls between 0,1 and 0,4, which indicates the product is affordable but not sustainable..

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
BURÇİN ATILGAN TÜRKMEN

Abstract A massive increase in the use and production of masks worldwide has been seen in the current COVID-19 pandemic, which has contributed to reducing the transmission of the virus globally. This paper aims to evaluate the environmental impacts of disposable medical masks using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method, first for the selected functional unit related to the manufacturing of one disposable medical mask and then for the global manufacturing of this type of mask in 2020. The inventory data was constructed directly from the industry. The system boundaries include the fabric, nose wire, and ear loops parts, transportation of materials, body making, ultrasonic vending, and packaging steps. The results suggest that the global warming potential of a disposable medical mask is 0.02 g CO2-Eq. for which the main contributor is the packaging step (44%) followed by the life cycle of fabric (27%), and nose wire (14%) parts. In total, 52 billion disposable medical masks used worldwide consumes 25 TJ of energy in 2020. The global warming potential of disposable medical masks supplied in a year of the COVID-19 pandemic is 1.1 Mt CO2 eq., equivalent to around 1.3 billion return flights from Istanbul to New York. This paper assessed the hotspots in the medical mask, allowing for a significant reduction in the environmental impact of mask use. This can be used as a roadmap for future mask designs.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 2898
Author(s):  
Rakhyun Kim ◽  
Myung-Kwan Lim ◽  
Seungjun Roh ◽  
Won-Jun Park

This study analyzed the characteristics of the environmental impacts of apartment buildings, a typical housing type in South Korea, as part of a research project supporting the streamlined life cycle assessment (S-LCA) of buildings within the G-SEED (Green Standard for Energy and Environmental Design) framework. Three recently built apartment building complexes were chosen as study objects for the quantitative evaluation of the buildings in terms of their embodied environmental impacts (global warming potential, acidification potential, eutrophication potential, ozone layer depletion potential, photochemical oxidant creation potential, and abiotic depletion potential), using the LCA approach. Additionally, we analyzed the emission trends according to the cut-off criteria of the six environmental impact categories by performing an S-LCA with cut-off criteria 90–99% of the cumulative weight percentile. Consequently, we were able to present the cut-off criterion best suited for S-LCA and analyze the effect of the cut-off criteria on the environmental impact analysis results. A comprehensive environmental impact analysis of the characteristics of the six environmental impact categories revealed that the error rate was below 5% when the cut-off criterion of 97.5% of the cumulative weight percentile was applied, thus verifying its validity as the optimal cut-off criterion for S-LCA.


2016 ◽  
Vol 106 (03) ◽  
pp. 136-140
Author(s):  
R. Miehe ◽  
M. Wiedenmann ◽  
T. Prof. Bauernhansl

Die Ökobilanz hat sich als Instrument zur Bewertung der Umweltauswirkungen von Produkten und Prozessen durchgesetzt. Dennoch stellt ihre Durchführung Nutzer immer wieder vor Herausforderungen. Der Fachartikel präsentiert einen Ansatz für eine vergleichende Betrachtung der ökologischen Auswirkungen des unternehmerischen Handelns auf Basis der jeweiligen Unternehmens- und Branchenumsätze. Der Umsatz-Nachhaltigkeitsindex soll als Konzept für ein Benchmark für Unternehmen einer Branche dienen.   Life Cycle Assessment has prevailed as an instrument to evaluate the environmental impact of products and processes. Its execution, however, poses a challenge to operators. In this paper, we present an approach for a comparative examination of environmental impacts of industrial behavior based on the turnover of companies and their equivalent sectors. The Turnover-Sustainability-Index serves as a benchmark for companies within a sector.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 6504-6515

With the development of additive manufacturing technology, 3D bone tissue engineering scaffolds have evolved. Bone tissue engineering is one of the techniques for repairing bone abnormalities caused by a variety of circumstances, such as injuries or the need to support damaged sections. Many bits of research have gone towards developing 3D bone tissue engineering scaffolds all across the world. The assessment of the environmental impact, on the other hand, has received less attention. As a result, the focus of this study is on developing a life cycle assessment (LCA) model for 3D bone tissue engineering scaffolds and evaluating potential environmental impacts. One of the methodologies to evaluating a complete environmental impact assessment is life cycle assessment (LCA). The cradle-to-grave method will be used in this study, and GaBi software was used to create the analysis for this study. Previous research on 3D bone tissue engineering fabrication employing poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate (PEGDA) soaked in dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), and diphenyl (2,4,6-trimethylbenzoyl) phosphine oxide (TPO) as a photoinitiator will be reviewed. Meanwhile, digital light processing (DLP) 3D printing is employed as the production technique. The GaBi program and the LCA model developed to highlight the potential environmental impact. This study shows how the input and output of LCA of 3D bone tissue engineering scaffolds might contribute to environmental issues such as air, freshwater, saltwater, and industrial soil emissions. The emission contributing to potential environmental impacts comes from life cycle input, electricity and transportation consumption, manufacturing process, and material resources. The results from this research can be used as an indicator for the researcher to take the impact of the development of 3D bone tissue engineering on the environment seriously.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (24) ◽  
pp. 6508
Author(s):  
Mona Kabus ◽  
Lars Nolting ◽  
Benedict J. Mortimer ◽  
Jan C. Koj ◽  
Wilhelm Kuckshinrichs ◽  
...  

We investigate the environmental impacts of on-board (based on alternating current, AC) and off-board (based on direct current, DC) charging concepts for electric vehicles using Life Cycle Assessment and considering a maximum charging power of 22 kW (AC) and 50 kW (DC). Our results show that the manufacturing of chargers provokes the highest contribution to environmental impacts of the production phase. Within the chargers, the filters could be identified as main polluters for all power levels. When comparing the results on a system level, the DC system causes less environmental impact than the AC system in all impact categories. In our diffusion scenarios for electric vehicles, annual emission reductions of up to 35 million kg CO2-eq. could be achieved when the DC system is used instead of the AC system. In addition to the environmental assessment, we examine economic effects. Here, we find annual savings of up to 8.5 million euros, when the DC system is used instead of the AC system.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristína Kováčiková ◽  
◽  
Antonín Kazda

The paper is focused on the assessment of the environmental impacts of transport infrastructure and individual types of transport using the life cycle assessment method. The paper contains a description of the basic terminology of the problem related to transport, the environment and methods of environmental impact assessment. The paper contains analysis on monitoring carbon dioxide emissions from a global perspective as well as from a regional perspective focused on Slovakia. The aim of the paper is to create a proposal for the assessment of environmental impacts of transport infrastructure, in the form of specification of areas of assessment for selected types of transport with a focus on carbon dioxide emissions. Using the knowledge and principles of the life cycle method, a proposal for relevant indicators and a proposal for a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of selected types of transport, focused on carbon dioxide emissions, is created in the paper


2011 ◽  
Vol 383-390 ◽  
pp. 3792-3798
Author(s):  
Le Luo ◽  
Wei Yi Sun ◽  
Cheng Qiu ◽  
Shi Jun Su ◽  
Hong Tao Wang

Reducing the adverse impacts to environment is a more and more important subject in electrolytic manganese industry. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been a hot tool to measure the type and size of environmental impact. This paper firstly applied LCA on two different processes of producing electrolytic manganese. One process is the resourceful utilization system of high sulfur coal and low grade pyrolusite (the novel process for short)in which high sulfur coal is burned to generate power and emission SO2, then the SO2 is absorbed as reducing agent to leach the pyrolusite with 30% MnO2 grade. The other process is prevalent interiorly, called traditional process where the power is supplied by standard coal combustion, and sulfur acid leaches the manganese ore with 18% Mn grade. Life cycle software converts the original data to nine different kinds of indexes that are able to indicate types and sizes of environmental impacts. Results show that: among nine environmental impacts, the proportion of abiotic depletion potential (ADP) is biggest in both processes, but the value of the novel process is 23.25% smaller pointing the process saves more resource. All the values of other important impacts including GWP, Waste Solids, AP and RI of the novel process are less than those in traditional process. Especially, the value of acidification (AP) in novel process was -2.10×10-8 < 0, which means the novel process could control the acidification. In addition, through the composite index, using high sulfur coal in the novel process hasn’t bring any more serious impact than using standard coal. Therefore, LCA has provided rational evidence to prove that resourceful utilization system of high sulfur coal and low grade pyrolusite is more efficient and environmentally friendly and pointed which environmental impacts and life cycle links need improving . This paper could provide a reference for further environmental impact assessment of electrolytic manganese industry and an objective basis for decision-making.


Author(s):  
Huihui Qi ◽  
Euihark Lee ◽  
Hae Chang Gea ◽  
Bin Zheng

The Packaging industry is one of the largest industries in the world and is associated with many environmental concerns. To reduce its environmental impacts, designing sustainable packaging has been one of the top priorities in packaging industries. A common tools for evaluating the environmental impact of a package design is the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) which provides information on environmental impacts for different indicators. However, making decisions based on the LCA results leaves us with major challenges. First, the LCA tools should consider various uncertainties such as measurement and data quality. Second, the LCA may give conflicting results on different environmental impact factors. To address these issues, a ranking based decision making framework is proposed in this paper. Within this framework a Probabilistic Pareto Selection method is introduced to select the Pareto Front with uncertainty first. Then, the Ranking based Rate of Substitution is implemented in the decision making process in order to select the best design options based on the trade-off of each Pareto design. Tow case studies are presented to demonstrate the functionality of this framework.


2016 ◽  
Vol 847 ◽  
pp. 328-334
Author(s):  
Li Feng Liu ◽  
Feng Gao ◽  
Shao Bo Wang ◽  
Zhi Hong Wang ◽  
Xian Zheng Gong ◽  
...  

Amorphous alloy strips has been widely used in the field of distribution transformers due to its good soft magnetic properties. The resources, energy consumption of the amorphous alloy strips production with the rapid solidification technique and the environmental impacts were calculated based on the life cycle assessment method. The results showed that the largest contribution to the non-renewable resource consumption was ferroboron production process, accounting for 98% of abiotic resource depletion (ADP). And the strip production process had the largest contribution to the global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential (AP), photochemical oxidation potential (POCP), human toxicity potential (HTP),eutrophication potential (EP). Ferroboron production process contributed the biggest environmental impact when producing 1 ton amorphous strip, accounting for 70% of the total environmental impact. Under the new technology for energy-saving and emission-reduction, when the utilization rate of boric acid increased in ferroboron production process, all the environmental impact decreased.


Revista EIA ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (31) ◽  
pp. 27-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Alicia Parrado Moreno ◽  
Ricardo Esteba Ricardo Hernández ◽  
Héctor Iván Velásquez Arredondo ◽  
Sergio Hernando Lopera Castro ◽  
Christian Hasenstab --

Colombia is a major flower exporter of a wide variety of species, among which the chrysanthemum plays a major role due to its exporting volume and profitability on the international market. This study examines the major environmental impacts of the chrysanthemum supply chain through a life cycle assessment (LCA). One kg of stems export quality was used as the functional unit (FU). The study examines cut-flowers systems from raw material extraction to final product commercialization for two markets (London and Miami) and analyzes two agroecosystems: one certified system and one uncertified system. The transport phase to London resulted in more significant environmental impacts than the transport phase to Miami, and climate change (GWP100) category was significant in both cities, generating values of 9.10E+00 and 2.51E+00 kg CO2-eq*FU for London and Miami, respectively. Furthermore, when exclusively considering pre-export phases, the uncertified system was found to have a greater impact than the certified system with respect to fertilizer use (certified 1,448E-02 kg*FU, uncertified 2.23E-01 kg*FU) and pesticide use (certified 1.24 E-04 kg*FU, uncertified 2.24E-03 kg*FU). With respect to the crop management, eutrophication (EP) and acidification (AP) processes imposed the greatest level of environmental impact. Strategies that would significantly reduce the environmental impact of this supply chain are considered, including the use of shipping and a 50% reduction in fertilizer use.


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