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 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 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.

REGARDING THE THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF SYSTEM MANAGEMENT OF ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION BY ROAD TRANSPORT

2020 ◽  
Vol 264 (4) ◽  
pp. 2-9
Author(s):  
Oleksiy Klimenko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Energy Efficiency ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Pollution ◽  
Management System ◽  
Road Transport ◽  
Transportation Infrastructure ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
System Management ◽  
Infrastructure Maintenance ◽  
Material Extraction

Suggestions for the development of theoretical and methodological foundations of system management of energy efficiency and environmental pollution by road transport in the life cycle are given. It takes into account all essential areas covering transportation, infrastructure, maintenance, also energy, chemical and automotive industries, raw material extraction, utilization, and related processes of energy consumption and environmental pollution, distributed in space and time. A universal structural scheme of the “supersystem” is proposed, which reflects the processes of consumption of energy, material and other resources, distributed environmental pollution through the functioning of road transport and related industries, and linked damage as well. The target function of the “supersystem” can be represented as the fulfilment during a certain period (covering the life cycle of the main elements – objects of influence (regulation) and investment of financial resources) of the specified volumes of certain types of transport work with the minimum possible and economically justified consumption of energy, consumables, materials, other resources (including those consumed by the transportation, infrastructure, maintenance, also energy, chemical and automotive industries, raw material extraction, utilization), the minimum possible losses due to artificial pressure on the recipients (human beings, fauna and flora, buildings, etc.) of directly the transport system and infrastructure, as well as side effects of processes in other elements of the “supersystem”, that may be reduced to the total cost of transport, taking into account the inflation index of monetary units. It is proposed to carry out a mathematical description of complicated sets, dynamically distributed in the space of objects that change the structure and properties over time, based on the further development of such a tool as the theory of multisets. In a simplified form, it is presented an example of a fragment of the management system based on measures to regulate the first access of vehicles to the market, further operation, and to certain elements of infrastructure, with the introduction of low emission zones in cities. The development, creation and effective functioning of the management system of transport and related sectors of the economy in those mentioned above and other parts, requires a coherent system approach based on forecasting (modelling) the consequences of decisions, which can be implemented using the tools described in this article. Keywords: wheeled vehicles, road transport, systems management, energy efficiency, environmental pollution.

On the essentials of drought in a changing climate

Science ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 368 (6488) ◽  
pp. 256-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toby R. Ault
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Greenhouse Gas Emissions ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Water Resource ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Resource Managers ◽  
The World

Droughts of the future are likely to be more frequent, severe, and longer lasting than they have been in recent decades, but drought risks will be lower if greenhouse gas emissions are cut aggressively. This review presents a synopsis of the tools required for understanding the statistics, physics, and dynamics of drought and its causes in a historical context. Although these tools have been applied most extensively in the United States, Europe, and the Amazon region, they have not been as widely used in other drought-prone regions throughout the rest of the world, presenting opportunities for future research. Water resource managers, early career scientists, and veteran drought researchers will likely see opportunities to improve our understanding of drought.

Deciphering the true life cycle environmental impacts and costs of the mega-scale shale gas-to-olefins projects in the United States

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 820-840 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chang He ◽  
Fengqi You
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Shale Gas ◽  
The United States ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Environmental Models ◽  
The U.S

Using detailed techno-economic-environmental models, we investigate the environmental impacts and production costs of the mega-scale shale gas-to-olefins projects in the U.S.

scholarly journals Life Cycle Assessment and Environmental Valuation of Biochar Production: Two Case Studies in Belgium

Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 2166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Rajabi Hamedani ◽  
Tom Kuppens ◽  
Robert Malina ◽  
Enrico Bocci ◽  
Andrea Colantoni ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Production Systems ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
Pig Manure ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Life Cycle Perspective ◽  
The Impact

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.

scholarly journals Integrating Protein Quality and Quantity with Environmental Impacts in Life Cycle Assessment

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 2747 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Berardy ◽  
Carol S. Johnston ◽  
Alexandra Plukis ◽  
Maricarmen Vizcaino ◽  
Christopher Wharton
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Protein Quality ◽  
Consumption Patterns ◽  
Biological Value ◽  
True Value ◽  
Indispensable Amino Acid ◽  
Amino Acid Score ◽  
Material Extraction

Life cycle assessment (LCA) evaluates environmental impacts of a product from material extraction through disposal. Applications of LCA in evaluating diets and foods indicate that plant-based foods have lower environmental impacts than animal-based foods, whether on the basis of total weight or weight of the protein content. However, LCA comparisons do not differentiate the true biological value of protein bioavailability. This paper presents a methodology to incorporate protein quality and quantity using the digestible indispensable amino acid score (DIAAS) when making comparisons using LCA data. The methodology also incorporates the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) reference amounts customarily consumed (RACCs) to best represent actual consumption patterns. Integration of these measures into LCA provides a mechanism to identify foods that offer balance between the true value of their protein and environmental impacts. To demonstrate, this approach is applied to LCA data regarding common protein foods’ global warming potential (GWP). The end result is a ratio-based score representing the biological value of protein on a GWP basis. Principal findings show that protein powders provide the best efficiency while cheeses, grains, and beef are the least efficient. This study demonstrates a new way to evaluate foods in terms of nutrition and sustainability.

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.

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