scholarly journals Assessment of Environmental Impacts of Limestone Quarrying Operations in Thailand

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suthirat Kittipongvises
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Mining Industry ◽  
Assessment Method ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Complete Life Cycle ◽  
Limestone Rock ◽  
Limestone Quarrying

Abstract Environmental impacts of the mineral extraction have been a public concern. Presently, there is widespread global interest in the area of mining and its sustainability that focused on the need to shift mining industry to a more sustainable framework. The aim of this study was to systematically assess all possible environmental and climate change related impacts of the limestone quarrying operation in Thailand. By considering the life cycle assessment method, the production processes were divided into three phases: raw material extraction, transportation, and comminution. Both IMPACT 2002+ and the Greenhouse Gas Protocol methods were used. Results of IMPACT 2002+ analysis showed that per 1 ton crushed limestone rock production, the total depletion of resource and GHGs emissions were 79.6 MJ and 2.76 kg CO2 eq., respectively. Regarding to the four damage categories, ‘resources’ and ‘climate change’ categories were the two greatest environmental impacts of the limestone rock production. Diesel fuel and electricity consumption in the mining processes were the main causes of those impacts. For climate change, the unit of CO2 eq. was expressed to quantify the total GHGs emissions. Estimated result was about 3.13 kg CO2 eq. per ton limestone rock product. The results obtained by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol were also similar to IMPACT 2002+ method. Electrical energy consumption was considered as the main driver of GHGs, accounting for approximately 46.8 % of total fossil fuel CO2 emissions. A final point should be noted that data uncertainties in environmental assessment over the complete life cycle of limestone quarrying operation have to be carefully considered.

scholarly journals Life Cycle Assessment of Heaven Mushroom Product

2021 ◽  
Vol 228 ◽  
pp. 02003
Author(s):  
Phatcharapron Sukkanta ◽  
Krittaphas Mongkolkoldhumrongkul
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Functional Unit ◽  
Assessment Method ◽  
Cradle To Gate ◽  
Impacts Of Climate Change

Climate change affects all regions around the world, so efforts to minimize the environmental impacts of climate change have high importance. The aim of this study is to evaluate the environmental impacts on the production of heaven mushroom product at the Ban Tai Khod community in Rayong, Thailand. In this study, cradle to gate was selected as the system boundary and functional unit from the life cycle assessment method. The results found that the process of building a mushroom house has the highest greenhouse gas emissions of 1, 496.609 kgCO2eq. The mushroom cubes mixing process has the highest energy consumption throughout the production process, requiring an energy consumption of 5.595 kWh. The greenhouse gas is released amount 3, 588.362 kgCO2eq. throughout this process. Additionally, the payback period of the heaven mushroom product is 0.92 years.

scholarly journals A Framework for Life Cycle Assessment and Cost Analysis of Precast and Cast-in-Place Buildings in United States

10.29007/f3tz ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanmay Vasishta ◽  
Mohammed Mehany
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Construction Projects ◽  
Probabilistic Approach ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Complete Life Cycle ◽  
The World ◽  
Material Extraction

The concept of construction sustainability has been gaining traction over years now. A large number of tools has been used to assess economic and environmental impacts of the buildings. LCA and LCCA are one of the most widely used tools to evaluate the environmental and economic impacts of the buildings over their complete life cycle. The aim of this research is to develop a framework for assessing the economic and environmental impacts of precast and cast-in-place buildings constructed in United States through Open LCA software. The study will include unit processes and material flows from raw material extraction and manufacturing phase to demolition phase of a building (cradle-to-grave) over the life span of 50 years. The developed framework for LCA and LCCA could be applied to all concrete construction projects across the world and could be used as platform for conducting future LCA and LCCA studies as well. Future research could be conducted through probabilistic approach of calculating the annual cost impacts over the complete life cycle of a building.

scholarly journals ANALISIS POTENSI DAMPAK LINGKUNGAN DARI BUDIDAYA TEBU MENGGUNAKAN PENDEKATAN LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT (LCA)

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-64
Author(s):  
Arieyanti Dwi Astuti
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Photochemical Oxidation ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Human Toxicity

ENGLISHMinimizing the adverse impact of sugarcane plantation can be carried out through many ways including increasing the efficiency of energy and natural resources consumption as well as improving the management of waste and emissions. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was applied to assess the environmental impact of sugarcane plantation without considering sugarcane usage as a raw material in the sugar industry (gate to gate). CML (baseline) was used as Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) method. This study aimed to: 1) examine the natural resources and energy consumption; 2) analyze and identify potential environmental impacts; and 3) recommend alternative improvements to reduce environmental impacts. It used primary data and secondary data. The results showed that: 1) natural resources were used to produce 16,097 ton of sugarcane or 1 ton of sugar, were land requirement (0.233 ha), water consumption (2,223.117 m3), and energy consumption (19,234.254 MJ); 2) there are five most potential environmental impacts which are analyzed by using openLCA including climate change (134,275.23 kg CO2 eq), eutrophication (120.24 kg PO4 eq), acidification (1.54 kg SO2 eq), photochemical oxidation (0.36 kg ethylene eq), and human toxicity (0.15 kg 1.4-dichlorobenzene eq); 3) alternative recommendation could be conducted by reducing the usage of inorganic fertilizer, and utilizing cane trash (dry leaves, green leaves, and tops) as boiler fuel for production process in sugar factory. INDONESIABudidaya tebu menimbulkan dampak negatif terhadap lingkungan sehingga diperlukan upaya untuk meminimalisir dampak negatif tersebut melalui efisiensi konsumsi energi, konsumsi sumber daya alam (SDA), serta pengelolaan limbah dan emisi. LCA merupakan salah satu metode untuk menganalisis dampak lingkungan dari budidaya tebu tanpa mempertimbangkan penggunaan tebu panen sebagai bahan baku industri gula (gate to gate). Metode yang digunakan untuk LCIA adalah CML (baseline). Penelitian ini  bertujuan untuk: 1) menghitung penggunaan SDA dan energy, 2) menganalisis dan mengidentifikasi potensi dampak lingkungan, dan 3) menyajikan rekomendasi perbaikan untuk menurunkan dampak lingkungan. Data penelitian berupa data primer dan data sekunder. Unit fungsional pada penelitian ini adalah produksi 1 ton gula untuk satu tahun. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa: 1) konsumsi SDA berupa lahan tebu seluas 0,233 ha, air sebanyak 2.223,117 m3 dan energi sebesar 19.234,254 MJ; 2) potensi dampak lingkungan yang dianalisis menggunakan OpenLCA menghasilkan 5 dampak lingkungan tertinggi, yaitu climate change (134.275,23 kg CO2 eq), eutrophication (120,24 kg PO4 eq), acidification (1,54 kg SO2 eq), photochemical oxidation (0,36 kg ethylene eq), and human toxicity (0,15 kg 1,4-dichlorobenzene eq); 3) alternatif perbaikan yang direkomendasikan berupa penggunaan pupuk anorganik dengan dosis yang tepat dan memanfaatkan limbah pasca pane n (daun kering, serasah) sebagai bahan bakar boiler untuk proses produksi industri gula.

Evaluating environmental impacts of an oil tanker using life cycle assessment method

2021 ◽  
pp. 147509022198919
Author(s):  
Pham Ky Quang ◽  
Duc Tuan Dong ◽  
Pham Thi Thanh Hai
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Assessment Method ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Cycle Phase ◽  
Life Cycle Phase ◽  
Whole Life Cycle ◽  
Oil Tanker

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is considered a holistic approach in evaluating the environmental impacts of a product in its life cycle. Recently, LCA method has been applied in the shipping and shipbuilding sectors. In order to provide a comprehensive LCA research in the field of naval architecture, this study uses LCA method to assess the environmental performance of a Panamax oil tanker in its whole life cycle. The ship’s life cycle including transportation activities is divided into five phases: raw material extraction & production, shipbuilding, operation, maintenance, and ship’s end of life. CML 2001 is chosen as the life cycle impact assessment methodology. GaBi software is used to obtain the life cycle emission inventory and environmental impacts. The results show the contributions of each life cycle phase to the total life cycle. Detailed emissions and environmental impacts of the ship are also analyzed. Due to huge amount of fuel consumed in ship operation, this phase dominates the emissions and environmental impact, compared with other phases. This study gives to the LCA practitioners a cradle-to-grave LCA example that could be useful for future researches in the field of shipping and shipbuilding sectors.

scholarly journals Reuse of Barley Straw for Handmade Paper Production

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alma Delia Delia Román Gutiérrez ◽  
Juan Hernandez Avila ◽  
Antonia Karina Vargas M. ◽  
Eduardo Cerecedo Saenz ◽  
Eleazar Salinas-Rodríguez
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Waste Treatment ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Barley Straw ◽  
Handmade Paper ◽  
Organic Solid Waste ◽  
Organic Solid ◽  
Spent Grain

Usually in the manufacture of beer by fermentation of barley, in both industrialized and developing countries significant amounts of organic solid waste are produced from barley straw. These possibly have an impact on the carbon footprint with an effect on global warming. According to this, it is important to reduce environmental impact of these solid residues, and an adequate way is the recycling using them as raw material for the elaboration of handmade paper. Therefore, it is required to manage this type of waste by analyzing the environmental impact, and thus be able to identify sustainable practices for the treatment of this food waste, evaluating its life cycle, which is a useful methodology to estimate said environmental impacts. It is because of this work shows the main results obtained using the life cycle analysis (LCA) methodology, to evaluate the possible environmental impacts during the waste treatment of a brewery located in the state of Hidalgo, Mexico. The residues evaluated were barley straw, malt residues and spent grain, and at the end, barley straw was selected to determine in detail its environmental impact and its reuse, the sheets analyzed presented a grammage that varies from 66 g/m2 and 143 g/m2, resistance to burst was 117 to 145 kpa, with a crystallinity of 34.4% to 37.1%.

scholarly journals Comprehensive Assessment for Construction Materials’ Environmental Safety

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (6) ◽  
pp. 38-47
Author(s):  
Мануйлова ◽  
Natalia Manuylova ◽  
Булычев ◽  
Sergey Bulychev ◽  
Горбачев ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Construction Materials ◽  
Environmental Safety ◽  
Comprehensive Assessment ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Specific Product ◽  
Life Cycle Stages ◽  
Complete Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Properties ◽  
Proper Material

Problems related to a comprehensive assessment of construction materials’ environmental safety, taking into account stages of products’ complete life cycle have been considered. Approaches to determination of material’s safety and environmental record as environmental characteristics of the material, regardless of its use in a specific product, and without regard to processing technology have been described. It has been proposed to consider material’s safety and environmental record as the sum of three environmental safety factors for material’s life cycle stages: production of raw material and its potential environmental hazard; processing of raw material in the material; proper material from the standpoint of its environmental safety and effects on the human body. This criterion application allows compare the environmental properties both of cognate materials and dissimilar ones.

Investigation of the two-decade environmental impact of large-scale agricultural cultivation and its impact on climate change in the Lajta-Project

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
András Polgár ◽  
Karolina Horváth ◽  
Imre Mészáros ◽  
Adrienn Horváth ◽  
András Bidló ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Winter Wheat ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Crop Production ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Winter Barley ◽  
Cultivated Plants ◽  
Agricultural Activity

<p>Crop production is applied on about half of Hungary’s land area, which amounts to approximately 4.5 million hectares. The agricultural activity has significant environmental impacts.</p><p>Our work aims the time series investigation of the impacts of large-scale agricultural cultivation<strong> </strong>on environment and primarily on climate change in<strong> </strong>the test area by applying environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) method.</p><p>The investigated area of Lajta Project can be found in the triangle formed by the settlements Mosonszolnok, Jánossomorja and Várbalog, in the north-western corner of Hungary, in Győr-Moson-Sopron county. The area has intense agri-environment characteristics, almost entirely lacking of grasslands and meadows.</p><p>We were looking for the answer to the question “To what extent does agricultural activity on this area impact the environment and how can it contribute to climate change during a given period?” The selection of the plants included in the analysis was justified by their significant growing area. We analysed the cultivation data of 5 crops: canola, winter barley, winter wheat, green maize and maize. Material flows of arable crop production technologies were defined in time series by the agricultural parcel register data. These covered the size of the area actually cultivated, the operational processes, records on seeds, fertilizer and pesticide use and harvest data by parcels. The examined environmental inventory database contained also the fuel consumption and lubricating oil usage of machine operations, and the water usage of chemical utilization.</p><p>In the life cycle modelling of cultivation, we examined 13 years of maize, 20 years of green maize, 20 years of winter barley, 18 years of winter wheat and 15 years of canola data calculated on 1 ha unit using GaBi life cycle analysis software.</p><p>In addition, we also calculated by an average cultivation model for all cultivated plants with reference data to 1 ha and 1 year period.</p><p>We applied methods and models in our life cycle impact assessment. According to the values of the impact categories, we set up the following increasing environmental ranking of plant cultivation: (1) canola has minimum environmental impacts followed by (2) green maize and (3) maize with slightly higher values, (4) winter barley has 6 times higher values preceded by (5) winter wheat with a slight difference. The previous environmental ranking of the specific cultivated plants’ contribution was also confirmed as regards the overall environmental impact: canola (1.0%) – green maize (4.9%) – maize (7.1%) – winter barley (43.1%) – winter wheat (44.0%).</p><p>Environmental impact category indicator results cumulated to total cultivation periods and total crop growing areas (quantitative approach) display the specific environmental footprints by crops. Increasing environmental ranking of environmental impacts resulted from cultivating the sample area is the following: (1) canola – (2) maize – (3) green maize – (4) winter barley – (5) winter wheat. The slight difference resulted in the rankings in quantitative approach according to the rankings of territorial approach on the investigated area is due to the diversity of cultivation time factor and the crop-growing parameter of the specific crops.</p><p>Acknowledgement: Our research was supported by the „Lajta-Project”.</p>

scholarly journals Is Recycling Always the Best Option? Environmental Assessment of Recycling of Seashell as Aggregates in Noise Barriers

Processes ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (7) ◽  
pp. 776
Author(s):  
Begoña Peceño ◽  
Carlos Leiva ◽  
Bernabé Alonso-Fariñas ◽  
Alejandro Gallego-Schmid
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Waste Recycling ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Recycling Process ◽  
Noise Barriers ◽  
Noise Barrier ◽  
Pre Treatment ◽  
Natural Aggregates

Waste recycling is an essential part of waste management. The concrete industry allows the use of large quantities of waste as a substitute for a conventional raw material without sacrificing the technical properties of the product. From a circular economy point of view, this is an excellent opportunity for waste recycling. Nevertheless, in some cases, the recycling process can be undesirable because it does not involve a net saving in resource consumption or other environmental impacts when compared to the conventional production process. In this study, the environmental performance of conventional absorption porous barriers, composed of 86 wt % of natural aggregates and 14 wt % cement, was compared with barriers composed of 80 wt % seashell waste and 20 wt % cement through an attributional cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment. The results show that, for the 11 environmental impact categories considered, the substitution of the natural aggregates with seashell waste involves higher environmental impacts, between 32% and 267%. These results are justified by the high contribution to these impacts of the seashell waste pre-treatment and the higher cement consumption. Therefore, the recycling of seashells in noise barrier manufacturing is not justified from an environmental standpoint with the current conditions. In this sense, it could be concluded that life cycle assessments should be carried out simultaneously with the technical development of the recycling process to ensure a sustainable solution.

Comparison of Life Cycle Assessment of Two Toasters

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raghunathan Srinivasan ◽  
Gaurav Ameta
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Recovery Phase ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Energy Impact ◽  
Household Products ◽  
Use Phase ◽  
One Year

The objective of this paper is to determine and compare the environmental impacts of two toasters: standard and eco-friendly. The most rapidly growing sector for the e-waste world comes from Electronic household products. More than 2 million tons of electronic products are disposed off as solid waste to landfills in the US alone. The demand for energy supplies has been rapidly increasing in the past decade. Strict legislative measures should be enforced to protect the environment by making industries collect back the manufactured products at the End-of-Life (EOL) from the users and recycle the products. If these necessary steps are not taken, then these e-wastes will impose serious threat to society and the environment. In order to re-design environmentally friendly products and facilitate sustainable take-back planning, current products need to be evaluated for their environmental impacts. One of the widely used methodologies to assess the environmental impacts of a product is called Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). LCA is a cradle to grave approach for assessing the environmental impacts of a product. The cradle to grave approach includes raw material phase, manufacturing and assembly phase, use phase, recovery phase and disposal phase. The system boundary for LCA presented in this paper includes material phase, manufacturing phase, use-phase and disposal phase. The functional unit for the LCA is entire life of the toaster which is one year based on manufacturer’s warranty which also includes the rate of usage. The environmental impacts from the two toasters as presented in this paper include eutrophication, acidification, energy-use and global warming. The use phase energy impact is experimentally determined.

Research on Carbon Emissions Measurement of Coal-Energy Chain Based on Life-Cycle Assessment Method

2013 ◽  
Vol 367 ◽  
pp. 333-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jie Xu
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Carbon Emissions ◽  
Life Cycle Analysis ◽  
Greenhouse Gas Emission ◽  
Assessment Method ◽  
Gas Emission ◽  
Measurement Models ◽  
Energy Chain ◽  
Generate Unit

Thepaper proposes to established the measurement models of China's coal-energychain carbon emissions based on life-cycle analysis, Through comparing the source andsize of the greenhouse gas emissions of coal-energy chain, the paper gains the totalCO2 equivalent emissions of coal-fired power plant generate unit generatingcapacity during coal-energy chain by detailed calculations is 990.716331 gCO2/kwh.Among them, greenhouse gas emission of coal-fired power generation sector isthe main link in coal-energy chain and aslo the focus of regulation andemissino reduction. Finally puts forward some suggestions to achieve low-carbonpath of China'selectric power industry.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document