Life Cycle Assessment of Mechanical and Physical Method Used in Recycling Process of Waste Thermosetting Phenolic Laminated Plastic Based on GaBi Software

2012 ◽  
Vol 229-231 ◽  
pp. 1802-1806 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhi Feng Liu ◽  
Shao Bo Pan ◽  
Zhong Wei Wu ◽  
Yi Fei Zhan

Based on software GaBi4.3, life cycle assessment method is used to analyze the abiotic depletion, energy consumption and environmental emissions of recycling process of 1kg waste thermosetting phenolic laminated plastic. This paper also takes advantage of CML2001 provided by GaBi to assess the environmental impacts through the recycling process. The result shows that the rank of environmental impact is: Regeneration> Molding > Crush; the main environmental impacts are global warming potential, acidification potential and eutrophication potential.

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (12) ◽  
pp. 1320-1326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Md Rakibul Alam ◽  
Kamal Hossain ◽  
Ali Azhar Butt ◽  
Tim Caudle ◽  
Carlos Bazan

Although pavement maintenance and rehabilitation (M&R) techniques are usually examined in economic terms, there is a growing need to address their environmental footprints. The objective of this study is to assess the environmental impacts of M&R techniques. Life cycle assessment (LCA) can help in the decision-making process of selecting suitable maintenance techniques based on their environmental impacts. This study investigates: patching, rout & sealing, hot in-place recycling, and cold in-place recycling. Global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential, human health particulate, eutrophication potential, ozone depletion potential, and smog potential are estimated as environmental impacts for each maintenance activity. Materials, equipment use (for construction and M&R), and transportation were the main elements considered. A sensitivity test is performed to identify the significant factors for the LCA. The study concluded that GWP was the most important impact category. Rout & sealing and cold in-place recycling produced the lowest GWP emissions. Notably, pavement patching and hot in-place recycling showed significant detrimental environmental impacts.


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


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (21) ◽  
pp. 11682
Author(s):  
Martin Nwodo ◽  
Chimay Anumba

The relevance of exergy to the life cycle assessment (LCA) of buildings has been studied regarding its potential to solve certain challenges in LCA, such as the characterization and valuation, accuracy of resource use, and interpretation and comparison of results. However, this potential has not been properly investigated using case studies. This study develops an exergy-based LCA method and applies it to three case-study buildings to explore its benefits. The results provide evidence that the theoretical benefits of exergy-based LCA as against a conventional LCA can be achieved. These include characterization and valuation benefits, accuracy, and enabling the comparison of environmental impacts. With the results of the exergy-based LCA method in standard metrics, there is now a mechanism for the competitive benchmarking of building sustainability assessments. It is concluded that the exergy-based life cycle assessment method has the potential to solve the characterization and valuation problems in the conventional life-cycle assessment of buildings, with local and global significance.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (19) ◽  
pp. 5324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Maga ◽  
Markus Hiebel ◽  
Venkat Aryan

In light of the debate on the circular economy, the EU strategy for plastics, and several national regulations, such as the German Packaging Act, polymeric foam materials as well as hybrid packaging (multilayered plastic) are now in focus. To understand the environmental impacts of various tray solutions for meat packaging, a comparative environmental assessment was conducted. As an environmental assessment method, a life cycle assessment (LCA) was applied following the ISO standards 14040/44. The nine packaging solutions investigated were: PS-based trays (extruded polystyrene and extruded polystyrene with five-layered structure containing ethylene vinyl alcohol), PET-based trays (recycled polyethylene terephthalate, with and without polyethylene layer, and amorphous polyethylene terephthalate), polypropylene (PP) and polylactic acid (PLA). The scope of the LCA study included the production of the tray and the end-of-life stage. The production of meat, the filling of the tray with meat and the tray sealing were not taken into account. The results show that the PS-based trays, especially the mono material solutions made of extruded polystyrene (XPS), show the lowest environmental impact across all 12 impact categories except for resource depletion. Multilayer products exhibit higher environmental impacts. The LCA also shows that the end-of-life stage has an important influence on the environmental performance of trays. However, the production of the trays dominates the overall results. Furthermore, the sensitivity analysis illustrates that, even if higher recycling rates were realised in the future, XPS based solutions would still outperform the rest from an environmental perspective.


2011 ◽  
Vol 471-472 ◽  
pp. 999-1004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariam Al-Ma'adeed ◽  
Gozde Ozerkan ◽  
Ramazan Kahraman ◽  
Saravanan Rajendran ◽  
Alma Hodzic

Although recycled polymers and reinforced polymer composites have been in use for many years there is little information available on their environmental impacts. The goal of the present study is to analyze the environmental impact of new composite materials obtained from the combination of recycled thermoplastics (polypropylene [PP] and polyethylene [PE]) with mineral fillers like talc and with glass fiber. The environmental impact of these composite materials is compared to the impact of virgin PP and PE. The recycled and virgin materials were compared using life cycle assessment method according to their environmental effects. Within the scope of the study, GaBi software was used for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis. From cradle-to-grave life cycle inventory studies were performed for 1 kg of each of the thermoplastics. Landfilling was considered as reference scenario and compared with filled recycled plastics. A quantitative impact assessment was performed for four environmental impact categories, global warming (GWP) over a hundred years, human toxicity (HTP), abiotic depletion (ADP) and acidification potential (AP) were taken into consideration during LCA. In the comparison of recycled and virgin polymers, it was seen that recycling has lower environmental effect for different impact assessment methods like acidification potential, abiotic depletion, human toxicity and global warming.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (17) ◽  
pp. 7947
Author(s):  
Joana Almeida ◽  
Paulina Faria ◽  
Alexandra Branco Ribeiro ◽  
António Santos Silva

The use of secondary mining resources to replace conventional constituents in mortars production has proved the effectiveness to preserve the quality of mechanical, physical, and chemical properties. However, minimal research has been performed to quantify the environmental impacts of mortars with mining residues. In the present work, a life cycle assessment of 10 mortars was carried out. A reference mortar (100% of cement binder) and mortars with cement substitutions in 10, 25, and 50% by raw, electrodialytic treated, and electrodialytic plus thermal treated mining residues were analysed. The impacts were studied in six environmental categories: (1) abiotic depletion; (2) global warming; (3) ozone depletion; (4) photochemical ozone creation; (5) acidification; and (6) eutrophication potentials. The results demonstrated that mortars formulated with raw mining residues may decrease the environmental impacts, namely in global warming potential (55.1 kg CO2 eq./t modified mortar). Considering the treatments applied to mining residues, the major mitigations were reported in photochemical ozone creation (−99%), ozone depletion (−76 to −98%), and acidification potential (−90 to −94%), mainly due to the disposal impacts avoided in comparison to the reference mortar. Analysing all mortars’ constituents and their management options, products with electrodialytic treated mining residues showed higher influence in ozone depletion (18 to 52%). Coupling a thermal procedure, mining residues contributed for 99% of the abiotic depletion potential of mortars.


2008 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 89 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Hishinuma ◽  
H. Kurishima ◽  
C. Yang ◽  
Y. Genchi

The aim of this study was to use life cycle assessment methods to determine the environmental impacts of manure utilisation by a biogas plant and by a typical manure composting system. The functional unit was defined as the average annual manure utilisation on a dairy farm with 100 cows. The environmental impact categories chosen were emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) and acidification gases (AG). The GHG emissions were estimated as: 345.9 t CO2-equivalents (e) for solid composting (case 1), 625.4 t CO2-e for solid and liquid composting (case 2), and 86.3–90.1 t CO2-e for the biogas plant system. The AG emissions were estimated as: 10.1 t SO2-e for case 1, 18.4 t SO2-e for case 2, and 13.1–24.2 t SO2-e for the biogas plant system. These results show that a biogas plant system produces low GHG emissions, but comparatively high AG emissions with land application. It is suggested that land application using band spread or shallow injection attachments will decrease AG emissions (NH3) from biogas plant systems.


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