Papers by Keyword: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)

Abstract: Currently, the geotextile industry is dominated by petroleum-based products, and the market share of bio-based geotextiles is still very low. With climatic and more generally environmental issues, combined with the scarcity of petroleum resources, the use of bio-based products appears to be an avenue of choice to explore. Through this study, we intend to raise the environmental benefits of a natural geotextile woven from fibers extracted from the leaves of the dwarf palm plant, an abundant renewable resource in Morocco and Mediterranean basin. We used the life cycle assessment analysis from cradle to factory gate following the requirements of ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 standards. Our main objective is to provide an environmental profile for this natural geotextile to encourage its use in soil protection and to stimulate therefore the local economy. The LCA analysis results showed that the transportation phase is the main contributor to almost every environmental impact category. We also noticed that no environmental impact was identified for the raw material supply phase which is characterized by a traditional harvest of raw palm leaves from the palm plant that grows spontaneously in eco-friendly environment. A comparison with two examples of petroleum-based geotextiles available in the market shows that palm-fiber-based geotextile presented the lower impacts in all the categories, except for eutrophication and ozone layer depletion potentials, its carbon footprint is relatively low and can save an average of 0.84 Kg CO₂ eq. per surface unit (1 m²), nevertheless, its water consumption exceeds that recorded for synthetic geotextiles. Finally, palm-fiber geotextile can compete with the synthetic ones used in soil erosion, it is designed from renewable resource, naturally biodegradable, requires little energy for its production, and contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Abstract: The recycling utilization of solid waste is an important technical means for the sustainable development of the cement industry in China. Calcium carbide slag is a special solid waste in China, which can be used for cement production with a great advantage on CO₂ emission reduction. With an view to providing methodological and data support for the development of policies in the cement industry, this paper quantitatively analyzes the environmental effects/environmental benefits of the comprehensive utilization of calcium carbide slag in cement kiln by comparing the traditional system of Portland cement clinker completely produced by natural resources with the system of cement clinker produced by calcium carbide slag based on the life cycle assessment (LCA) method given in standards and specifications of ISO 14040 series. The results show that the latter system has a better effect in material saving and carbon emission reduction, will increase the energy consumption in cement production process, and also slightly increase other pollutants (e.g. SOx, NOx, etc.) emission. The GWP, AP and EP indicators of the calcium carbide slag cement clinker system decrease compared with those of the Portland cement clinker system, while other indicators do not differ much or even slightly increase.

Abstract: In order to address increasingly serious global environmental problems and intensified international trade barriers as well as the promotion of production processes by enterprises for the improvement of environmental impacts, Type III environmental declaration has emerged in response to the proper time and condition and gradually developed into an important mean to solve environmental problems. This study, based on the principles and requirements stated in ISO 14025, takes ceramic tile products as the example to discuss about the formulation of technical specifications for life cycle assessment of the ceramic tile, in order to provide methodological basis and technical support for the formulation of technical specifications for the life cycle assessment of other domestic products as well as for the assessment of Type III environmental declaration. Acknowledgement Sources of project funds: 13th Five-year National Key R&D Plan “Study on Key Technologies for Certification of Green Products Used in Home Furnishing Field” (No. 2017YFF0211504)

Abstract: With the emphasis of national policies on green manufacturing and the recognition of the people for green development, expanding the green assessment of products will be the general trend. In this study the life cycle assessment method was used to compile a list of resources, energy consumption and pollutant emissions during the life cycle of typical ordinary gypsum plasterboard and functional phase-change gypsum plasterboard, the key environmental impact indicators of both products during the life cycle calculated, the key stages affecting the environmental performance of products analyzed and identified, and the difference in environmental impacts between phase-change gypsum plasterboard and ordinary gypsum plasterboard compared and analyzed, for guiding the selection of green building materials and the development of ecological building materials. The results show that the global warming potential of phase-change gypsum plasterboard is 3.42 kgCO₂ equivalent/m², the non-renewable resource depletion potential is 2.25×10^-5 kgSb equivalent/m², the respiratory inorganic is 1.97×10^-3 kgPM_2.5 equivalent/m², the eutrophication is 1.21×10^-3 kgPO₄^3- equivalent/m², and the acidification is 9.47×10^-3 kgSO₂ equivalent/m². Compared with ordinary gypsum plasterboard, the phase-change gypsum plasterboard shows the biggest increase by 874.03% in non-renewable resource depletion potential. The major environmental impact of ordinary gypsum plasterboard in the life cycle is mainly from energy use, and the transport process is the main stage of eutrophication. The use of phase-change materials in the phase-change gypsum plasterboard is the main stage causing environmental impact.

Abstract: The annual output of domestic waste has exceeded 400 million tons in China since 2016, which causes an urgent demand on harmless disposal in the current rapid process of urbanization. Compared with traditional disposal means (e.g. incineration and landfill), co-processing with cement production seems to be a better chose to meet the requirements of domestic waste treatment (i.e. harmless, volume reduction, waste utilization). However, co-processing technology also has some negative impact (e.g. extra energy consumption for pretreatment of domestic waste), so the environmental feasibility of domestic waste co-processing in cement kiln should be verified. In this paper, the influences caused by domestic waste co-processing on the cement clinker products including resource/energy consumption, as well as the pollutant emissions were quantify based on the investigation of typical plants in China. Moreover, the environment impact between landfill treatment and co-processing scenario were compared using life cycle assessment (LCA) method. The result shows that the energy consumption and CO₂ emission per ton cement clinker production increased by 3.6% and 0.8% after co-process domestic waste, respectively. Furthermore, compared with sanitary landfill treatment, the co-processing in cement kiln will increase the impact of FFP, but reduce GWP and HTP impacts, especially significantly decrease the impact of LOP and SOP, bring in a good beneficial on material saving and energy saving.

Abstract: 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.

Abstract: The nickel cobalt manganese ternary (NCM) cathode material is one of the important parts of power lithium battery. The NCM cathode material production process including the Li₂CO₃ preparation, precursor preparation and synthesis process of cathode materials is resource-and energy- intensive, thus it leads to relatively severe environment pollution. In this article, life cycle assessment of NCM cathode material production using coprecipitation method in China was conducted based on ReCiPe method. The environmental impacts of the main processes were calculated. The main factors and sources causing environmental pressure were identified. The results indicated that the precursor production contributed the most to environmental impacts in the NCM cathode material production. The energy consumption of the precursor production was 612MJ, accounting for 94.6% of the total energy consumption of NCM production. The environmental impacts of the CoSO₄ production and NiSO₄ production were the main contributors to that of the precursor production. The primary cobalt and nickel resources in China with lower grade and difficult mining led to the high energy consumption of these two kinds of raw materials. Therefore, the development and utilization of the secondary cobalt and nickel metals will be a great potential to reduce environmental impacts of NCM production.

Abstract: In this study, the LCA assessment model of CML was employed to analyze the environmental burden caused by the production of glass substrates, and the evaluation of the environmental performance of five stages of preparation of ingredients, including glass melting, precision clarification, overflow molding and post process, was also conducted. The results show that the global warming potential is the dominant impact category in the comprehensive environmental burden with a normalized value of 4.64×10^-14, followed by the acidification potential (2.57×10^-14), photochemical oxidation potential (2.82×10^-15). And the relative contribution of abiotic depletion potential and human toxicity to the comprehensive environmental burden is rather limited, with the normalized values of 8.31×10^-17 and 1.21×10^-16, respectively. The single score of environmental impact due to the whole production system is 2.37×10^-13, wherein the environmental impact values of the processes of preparation of ingredients, glass melting, precision clarification, overflow molding, and post are 1.07×10^-15, 9.10×10^-14 (highest), 2.26×10^-14, 7.36×10^-14, and process 4.90×10^-14, respectively. The preparation of the batch, the glass melting, the overflow molding and the post process mainly cause the environmental effects of global warming potential and acidification potential, the cumulative values of which are 1.13×10^-13 and 9.01×10^-14, respectively. The precision clarification stage mainly causes the environmental effect of acidification potential, the value of which is 2.02×10^-14 and much higher than those of other environmental impact categories.

Abstract: Building materials and constructions pose a serious impact on the environment. Applying assessment tools such as life cycle assessment (LCA), it is possible to determine the environmental characteristics of materials, specific constructions or whole buildings. Today, however, there is a large amount of software that is freely available or bound by a license agreement. This paper is aimed at on comparison of the two different LCA software to evaluate the impacts of the selected construction: freely available software and software fixed by a license agreement. The comparison within the mandatory boundaries from cradle-to–gate includes the main environmental impacts such as climate changes, acidification, and embodied energy. The findings revealed that the results for the environmental parameters of constructions differ significantly regarding some structures, even though the input database was the same.

Abstract: In connection with the optimization of operation at the selected Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP), it is important to perform an energy audit with an assessment of the use of electricity and the subsequent economic optimization of the equipment of the WWTP. We can perform the energy balance through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis in relation to EN ISO 140 40 [1].The aim of this study case is the analysis of the energy balance of WWTP. The appraisal was performed on three different interpretation variants of specific electricity consumption. The conclusion is a comparison of variants of quantification of specific electricity consumption.