Techno-Economic and Life Cycle Assessment for the Production of Green Composites

Author(s):  
Siddharth Jain ◽  
Xiaolei Zhang

Botanically, green composites belong to an economically important seed plant family that includes maize, wheat, rice, and sorghum known as Saccharum offi cinarum. There are so many natural fibers available in the environment such as rice husk, hemp fibers, flax fibers, bamboo fibers, coconut fiber, coconut coir, grawia optiva and many others also. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a process to estimate the environmental feature and potential impacts related to a product, by organizing a directory of pertinent inputs and outputs of a product system, assessing the potential environmental impacts related with the said inputs and outputs, explaining the results of the inventory analysis and impact evaluation phases in connection to the objectives of the study. Particularly Bagasse, an agricultural residue not only becomes a problem from the environmental point of view, but also affects the profitability of the sugarcane industries. This chapter discusses the properties, processing methods and various other aspects including economic and environmental aspects related to green composites.

Author(s):  
Siddharth Jain ◽  
Xiaolei Zhang

Botanically, green composites belong to an economically important seed plant family that includes maize, wheat, rice, and sorghum known as Saccharum offi cinarum. There are so many natural fibers available in the environment such as rice husk, hemp fibers, flax fibers, bamboo fibers, coconut fiber, coconut coir, grawia optiva and many others also. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a process to estimate the environmental feature and potential impacts related to a product, by organizing a directory of pertinent inputs and outputs of a product system, assessing the potential environmental impacts related with the said inputs and outputs, explaining the results of the inventory analysis and impact evaluation phases in connection to the objectives of the study. Particularly Bagasse, an agricultural residue not only becomes a problem from the environmental point of view, but also affects the profitability of the sugarcane industries. This chapter discusses the properties, processing methods and various other aspects including economic and environmental aspects related to green composites.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 2472
Author(s):  
Teodora Stillitano ◽  
Emanuele Spada ◽  
Nathalie Iofrida ◽  
Giacomo Falcone ◽  
Anna Irene De Luca

This study aims at providing a systematic and critical review on the state of the art of life cycle applications from the circular economy point of view. In particular, the main objective is to understand how researchers adopt life cycle approaches for the measurement of the empirical circular pathways of agri-food systems along with the overall lifespan. To perform the literature review, the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) protocol was considered to conduct a review by qualitative synthesis. Specifically, an evaluation matrix has been set up to gather and synthesize research evidence, by classifying papers according to several integrated criteria. The literature search was carried out employing scientific databases. The findings highlight that 52 case studies out of 84 (62% of the total) use stand-alone life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate the benefits/impacts of circular economy (CE) strategies. In contrast, only eight studies (9.5%) deal with the life cycle costing (LCC) approach combined with other analyses while no paper deals with the social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) methodology. Global warming potential, eutrophication (for marine, freshwater, and terrestrial ecosystems), human toxicity, and ecotoxicity results are the most common LCA indicators applied. Only a few articles deal with the CE assessment through specific indicators. We argue that experts in life cycle methodologies must strive to adopt some key elements to ensure that the results obtained fit perfectly with the measurements of circularity and that these can even be largely based on a common basis.


2018 ◽  
Vol 174 ◽  
pp. 01006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Břetislav Teplý ◽  
Tomáš Vymazal ◽  
Pavla Rovnaníková

Efficient sustainability management requires the use of tools which allow material, technological and construction variants to be quantified, measured or compared. These tools can be used as a powerful marketing aid and as support for the transition to “circular economy”. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) procedures are also used, aside from other approaches. LCA is a method that evaluates the life cycle of a structure from the point of view of its impact on the environment. Consideration is given also to energy and raw material costs, as well as to environmental impact throughout the life cycle - e.g. due to emissions. The paper focuses on the quantification of sustainability connected with the use of various types of concrete with regard to their resistance to degradation. Sustainability coefficients are determined using information regarding service life and "eco-costs". The aim is to propose a suitable methodology which can simplify decision-making in the design and choice of concrete mixes from a wider perspective, i.e. not only with regard to load-bearing capacity or durability.


2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-34
Author(s):  
Ikhsan Diyarma ◽  
Tajuddin Bantacut ◽  

Abstract Increasement of demand for gayo arabica coffee has influenced the coffee industry, either in increasing the coffee production and also in increasing the usage of coffee machinery and equipment significantly. However, combustion of oil fuels result the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) which increase the effect of greenhouse gases from the coffee production process. This study aimed to analyze the direct impact of gayo coffee production towards environment using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method, including several stages such as (1) the goal and scope definition, (2) the inventory analysis, (3) the impact assessment, and (4) the interpretation. Results of this study showed that the energy needed to process 1000 kg of coffee was 7.67 MJ, while the produced liquid waste was 5 953.2 kg. The value of the global warming impact on the coffee life cycle was 56 807 165.63 CO2eq.


Procedia CIRP ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 496-501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiuhong Jiang ◽  
Zhichao Liu ◽  
Tao Li ◽  
Hongchao Zhang ◽  
Asif Iqbal

Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 2166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Rajabi Hamedani ◽  
Tom Kuppens ◽  
Robert Malina ◽  
Enrico Bocci ◽  
Andrea Colantoni ◽  
...  

It is unclear whether the production of biochar is economically feasible. As a consequence, firms do not often invest in biochar production plants. However, biochar production and application might be desirable from a societal perspective as it might entail net environmental benefits. Hence, the aim of this work has been to assess and monetize the environmental impacts of biochar production systems so that the environmental aspects can be integrated with the economic and social ones later on to quantify the total return for society. Therefore, a life cycle analysis (LCA) has been performed for two potential biochar production systems in Belgium based on two different feedstocks: (i) willow and (ii) pig manure. First, the environmental impacts of the two biochar production systems are assessed from a life cycle perspective, assuming one ton of biochar as the functional unit. Therefore, LCA using SimaPro software has been performed both on the midpoint and endpoint level. Biochar production from willow achieves better results compared to biochar from pig manure for all environmental impact categories considered. In a second step, monetary valuation has been applied to the LCA results in order to weigh environmental benefits against environmental costs using the Ecotax, Ecovalue, and Stepwise approach. Consequently, sensitivity analysis investigates the impact of variation in NPK savings and byproducts of the biochar production process on monetized life cycle assessment results. As a result, it is suggested that biochar production from willow is preferred to biochar production from pig manure from an environmental point of view. In future research, those monetized environmental impacts will be integrated within existing techno-economic models that calculate the financial viability from an investor’s point of view, so that the total return for society can be quantified and the preferred biochar production system from a societal point of view can be identified.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (10) ◽  
pp. 359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hwang ◽  
Jeong ◽  
Jung ◽  
Kim ◽  
Zhou

This research was focused on a comparative analysis of using LNG as a marine fuel with a conventional marine gas oil (MGO) from an environmental point of view. A case study was performed using a 50K bulk carrier engaged in domestic services in South Korea. Considering the energy exporting market for South Korea, the fuel supply chain was designed with the two largest suppliers: Middle East (LNG-Qatar/MGO-Saudi Arabia) and U.S. The life cycle of each fuel type was categorized into three stages: Well-to-Tank (WtT), Tank-to-Wake (TtW), and Well-to-Wake (WtW). With the process modelling, the environmental impact of each stage was analyzed based on the five environmental impact categorizes: Global Warming Potential (GWP), Acidification Potential (AP), Photochemical Potential (POCP), Eutrophication Potential (EP) and Particulate Matter (PM). Analysis results reveal that emission levels for the LNG cases are significantly lower than the MGO cases in all potential impact categories. Particularly, Case 1 (LNG import to Korea from Qatar) is identified as the best option as producing the lowest emission levels per 1.0 × 107 MJ of fuel consumption: 977 tonnages of CO2 equivalent (for GWP), 1.76 tonnages of SO2 equivalent (for AP), 1.18 tonnages of N equivalent (for EP), 4.28 tonnages of NMVOC equivalent (for POCP) and 26 kg of PM 2.5 equivalent (for PM). On the other hand, the results also point out that the selection of the fuel supply routes could be an important factor contributing to emission levels since longer distances for freight transportation result in more emissions. It is worth noting that the life cycle assessment can offer us better understanding of holistic emission levels contributed by marine fuels from the cradle to the grave, which are highly believed to remedy the shortcomings of current marine emission indicators.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 1825 ◽  
Author(s):  
Letitia Petrescu ◽  
Dora-Andreea Chisalita ◽  
Calin-Cristian Cormos ◽  
Giampaolo Manzolini ◽  
Paul Cobden ◽  
...  

The environmental evaluation of the sorption-enhanced water–gas shift (SEWGS) process to be used for the decarbonization of an integrated steel mill through life cycle assessment (LCA) is the subject of the present paper. This work is carried out within the STEPWISE H2020 project (grant agreement No. 640769). LCA calculations were based on material and energy balances derived from experimental activities, modeling activities, and literature data. Wide system boundaries containing various upstream and downstream processes as well as the main integrated steel mill are drawn for the system under study. The environmental indicators of the SEWGS process are compared to another carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology applied to the iron and steel industry (e.g., gas–liquid absorption using MEA). The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions for SEWGS technology is about 40%. For the other impact indicators, there is an increase in the SEWGS technology (in the range of 7.23% to 72.77%), which is mainly due to the sorbent production and transportation processes. Nevertheless, when compared with the post-combustion capture technology, based on gas–liquid absorption, from an environmental point of view, SEWGS performs significantly better, having impact factor values closer to the no-capture integrated steel mill.


2002 ◽  
Vol 124 (4) ◽  
pp. 290-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anugerah Widiyanto ◽  
Seizo Kato ◽  
Naoki Maruyama

In the past, the selection of an energy resource for electricity generation was dominated by finding the least expensive power generating plant. Although such an approach is essential, there is growing concern about other aspects of power generation such as social, environmental and technological benefits and consequences of the energy source selection. The aims of this paper are first to introduce a life cycle assessment (LCA) scheme with the aid of the NETS (Numerical Eco-load Total Standardization) method that we have newly proposed. This method provides a numerical measure for evaluating the quantitative load of any industrial activity on the environment, and has been used to analyze the energy flow and the environmental loads of various power generation systems. A second goal is to develop a computer program to examine the applicability of technology options based on cost performance and environmental load reduction. A final goal of this work is to select the power system using life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC). As a result, environmental load and economical cost for various power generation systems are discussed from the LCA point of view for further ecological improvement.


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