scholarly journals Life Cycle Assessment of Mortars with Incorporation of Industrial Wastes

Fibers ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (7) ◽  
pp. 59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catarina Brazão Farinha ◽  
José Dinis Silvestre ◽  
Jorge de Brito ◽  
Maria do Rosário Veiga
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Forest Biomass ◽  
Primary Energy ◽  
Energy Resources ◽  
Industrial Wastes ◽  
Impact Categories ◽  
Environmental Impact Categories ◽  
Depletion Potential

The production of waste is increasing yearly and, without a viable recycle or reutilization solution, waste is sent to landfills, where it can take thousand to years to degrade. Simultaneously, for the production of new materials, some industries continue to ignore the potential of wastes and keep on using natural resources for production. The incorporation of waste materials in mortars is a possible solution to avoid landfilling, through their recycling or reutilization. However, no evaluation of their “sustainability” in terms of environmental performance is available in the literature. In this sense, in this research a life cycle assessment was performed on mortars, namely renders, with incorporation of industrials wastes replacing sand and/or cement. For that purpose, eight environmental impact categories (abiotic depletion potential, global warming potential, ozone depletion potential, photochemical ozone creation potential, acidification potential, eutrophication potential, use of non-renewable primary energy resources, and use of renewable primary energy resources) within a “cradle to gate” boundary were analyzed for 19 mortars with incorporation of several industrial wastes: sanitary ware, glass fiber reinforced polymer, forest biomass ashes, and textile fibers. Sixteen out of the 19 mortars under analysis presented, in all environmental impact categories, an equal or better environment performance than a common mortar (used as a reference). The benefits in some environmental impacts were over 20%.

scholarly journals Analysis of the Characteristics of Environmental Impacts According to the Cut-Off Criteria Applicable to the Streamlined Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) of Apartment Buildings in South Korea

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 2898
Author(s):  
Rakhyun Kim ◽  
Myung-Kwan Lim ◽  
Seungjun Roh ◽  
Won-Jun Park
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Impact Analysis ◽  
Impact Categories ◽  
Environmental Impact Analysis ◽  
Apartment Buildings ◽  
Environmental Impact Categories ◽  
Weight Percentile

This study analyzed the characteristics of the environmental impacts of apartment buildings, a typical housing type in South Korea, as part of a research project supporting the streamlined life cycle assessment (S-LCA) of buildings within the G-SEED (Green Standard for Energy and Environmental Design) framework. Three recently built apartment building complexes were chosen as study objects for the quantitative evaluation of the buildings in terms of their embodied environmental impacts (global warming potential, acidification potential, eutrophication potential, ozone layer depletion potential, photochemical oxidant creation potential, and abiotic depletion potential), using the LCA approach. Additionally, we analyzed the emission trends according to the cut-off criteria of the six environmental impact categories by performing an S-LCA with cut-off criteria 90–99% of the cumulative weight percentile. Consequently, we were able to present the cut-off criterion best suited for S-LCA and analyze the effect of the cut-off criteria on the environmental impact analysis results. A comprehensive environmental impact analysis of the characteristics of the six environmental impact categories revealed that the error rate was below 5% when the cut-off criterion of 97.5% of the cumulative weight percentile was applied, thus verifying its validity as the optimal cut-off criterion for S-LCA.

scholarly journals Life Cycle Assessment of an Office Building Based on Site-Specific Data

Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (13) ◽  
pp. 2588 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Ylmén ◽  
Diego Peñaloza ◽  
Kristina Mjörnell
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Office Building ◽  
Impact Categories ◽  
Time Data ◽  
Specific Data ◽  
Environmental Impact Categories ◽  
The Impact

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an established method to assess the various environmental impacts associated with all the stages of a building. The goal of this project was to calculate the environmental releases for a whole office building and investigate the contribution in terms of environmental impact for different parts of the building, as well as the impact from different stages of the life cycle. The construction process was followed up during production and the contractors provided real-time data on the input required in terms of building products, transport, machinery, energy use, etc. The results are presented for five environmental impact categories and, as expected, materials that constitute the main mass of the building and the energy used during operation contribute the largest share of environmental impact. It is usually difficult to evaluate the environmental impact of the materials in technical installations due to the lack of data. However, in this study, the data were provided by the contractors directly involved in the construction and can, therefore, be considered highly reliable. The results show that materials for installations have a significant environmental impact for four of the environmental impact categories studied, which is a noteworthy finding.

scholarly journals Life Cycle Assessment of Solid Recovered Fuel Gasification in the State of Qatar

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
Ahmad Mohamed S. H. Al-Moftah ◽  
Richard Marsh ◽  
Julian Steer
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Natural Gas ◽  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Electricity Generation ◽  
Resource Depletion ◽  
Impact Categories ◽  
Fossil Resource ◽  
Environmental Impact Categories

Gas products from gasified solid recovered fuel (SRF) have been proposed as a replacement for natural gas to produce electricity in future power generation systems. In this work, the life cycle assessment (LCA) of SRF air gasification to energy was conducted using the Recipe2016 model considering five environmental impact categories and four scenarios in Qatar. The current situation of municipal solid waste (MSW) handling in Qatar is landfill with composting. The results show that using SRF gasification can reduce the environmental impact of MSW landfills and reliance on natural gas in electricity generation. Using SRF gasification on the selected five environmental impact categories—climate change, terrestrial acidification, marine ecotoxicity, water depletion and fossil resource depletion—returned significant reductions in environmental degradation. The LCA of the SRF gasification for the main four categories in the four scenarios gave varying results. The introduction of the SRF gasification reduced climate change-causing emissions by 41.3% because of production of renewable electricity. A reduction in water depletion and fossil resource depletion of 100 times were achieved. However, the use of solar technology and SRF gasification to generate electricity reduced the impact of climate change to almost zero emissions. Terrestrial acidification showed little to no change in all three scenarios investigated. This study was compared with the previous work from the literature and showed that on a nominal 10 kg MSW processing basis, 5 kg CO2 equivalent emissions were produced for the landfilling scenarios. While the previous studies reported that 8 kg CO2 produced per 10 kg MSW is processed for the same scenario. The findings indicate that introducing SRF gasification in solid waste management and electricity generation in Qatar has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emission load and related social, economic, political and environmental costs. In addition, the adoption of the SRF gasification in the country will contribute to Qatar’s national vision 2030 by reducing landfills and produce sustainable energy.

Life Cycle Assessment of Lightweight Aggregate Concrete Block

2014 ◽  
Vol 599 ◽  
pp. 66-69
Author(s):  
Li Li Zhao ◽  
Yu Liu ◽  
Zhi Hong Wang ◽  
Jia Ping Cui ◽  
Quan Jiang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Lightweight Aggregate ◽  
Concrete Block ◽  
Lightweight Aggregate Concrete ◽  
Environmental Load ◽  
Impact Categories ◽  
Aggregate Concrete ◽  
Environmental Impact Categories

The environmental impact of lightweight aggregate concrete block, which use fly ash ceramic, was analyzed. The results show that AP and GWP are the most significant environmental impact categories accounting for 30% and 25% of the total environmental impact respectively. The results also show that, in different life cycle phases, the environmental load of the lightweight aggregate concrete block is mainly caused by the production of cement, which accounts for 42% of the total environmental impact.

scholarly journals Sustainable Wine Scoring System (SWSS): A life cycle assessment (LCA) multivariable approach

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 03016 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.E. Valero ◽  
J.A. Howarter ◽  
J.W. Sutherland
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Ozone Depletion ◽  
Scoring System ◽  
Impact Categories ◽  
Reference Region ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Environmental Impact Categories ◽  
The Impact

Sustainable practices have become accepted by a large part of the wine community as a necessary step to face climate change challenges and natural resources depletion. Also, in recent years, there is a rising influence of sustainability on consumer’s buying decision. However, buyers fail to distinguish sustainable attributes from wine that is promoted under different sustainability labels. Moreover, wineries find it challenging to quantify the improvement of their environmental impact when following a specific sustainable practice. The objective of this study is to evaluate the methodology for the development of a Sustainable Wine Scoring System (SWSS). The SWSS aims to be a single numeric index of the sustainable attribute of a bottle of wine, constituted by multiple normalized indicators. Our initial approach for the SWSS is to quantify different environmental impact categories following a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), to then normalizes and weighs the result regarding a reference region. We used as a case of study “Craft Wineries” in Indiana in the USA, as a non-traditional winemaking area. The impact assessment was conducted using SimaPro8.5 in accordance to TRACI2.1 for the USA. As result of our LCA, grape growing is the process that contributes the most to the ecotoxicity, non-carcinogenic, and eutrophication impact categories, while transportation stages contribute the most to global warming potential, smog, and ozone depletion. The calculated SWSS results vary from 279 for the scenario with the highest environmental impact to 350 for the best performance scenario. The SWSS has the potential to represent sustainable attributes of wine in a more suitable way than a single isolated indicator such as carbon footprint.

scholarly journals Identifying the Major Construction Wastes in the Building Construction Phase Based on Life Cycle Assessments

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (19) ◽  
pp. 8096
Author(s):  
Won-Jun Park ◽  
Rakhyun Kim ◽  
Seungjun Roh ◽  
Hoki Ban
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Resource Depletion ◽  
Concrete Block ◽  
Impact Categories ◽  
Life Cycle Assessments ◽  
Environmental Impact Categories ◽  
Acidification Potential ◽  
Contribution Level ◽  
Depletion Potential

The purpose of this study was to identify the major wastes generated during the construction phase using a life cycle assessment. To accomplish this, the amount of waste generated in the construction phase was deduced using the loss rate and weight conversions. Major construction wastes were assessed using six comprehensive environmental impact categories, including global warming potential, abiotic depletion potential, acidification potential, eutrophication potential, ozone depletion potential, and photochemical ozone creation potential. According to the analysis results, five main construction wastes—concrete, rebar, cement, polystyrene panel, and concrete block—comprehensively satisfied the 95% cutoff criteria for all six environmental impact categories. The results of the environmental impact characterization assessment revealed that concrete, concrete block, and cement waste accounted for over 70% of the contribution level in all the environmental impact categories except resource depletion. Insulation materials accounted for 1% of the total waste generated but were identified by the environmental impact assessment to have the highest contribution level.

Life Cycle Assessment of Tungsten Production in China

2019 ◽  
Vol 944 ◽  
pp. 1137-1143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ke Wei Lu ◽  
Xian Zheng Gong ◽  
Bo Xue Sun ◽  
Qing Ding
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Steel Industry ◽  
Smelting Process ◽  
Impact Categories ◽  
Analysis Method ◽  
Total Consumption ◽  
Production Processes ◽  
Annual Total

Tungsten is an important strategic metal, widely used in cemented carbide manufacturing, steel industry, and other economic fields. The amount of tungsten resource consumed in China each year accounts for more than 80% of the world’s annual total consumption. The purpose of this study is to quantify the environmental impact of tungsten production in China through the method of LCA. The result shows that, regarding the contributions of impact categories, the normalized value of HTP is the largest one among various impact categories, which accounts for 35.39% of the total environmental impact, followed by AP, PMFP, GWP, MDP, FDP, and POFP, respectively. The results also show that, regarding the contributions of production processes, smelting process is the largest contributor to the environmental burden of tungsten production due to the crystallization and calcination reduction occurred in the smelting process consumes a large amount of electricity, followed by mining, beneficiation, and transportation, respectively. The major academic contribution of this paper to the existing literatures is that we employed process-based analysis method, which could improve the accuracy of the study and provide practical advices for tungsten enterprises to reduce the environmental impact.

scholarly journals A Building Life-Cycle Embodied Performance Index—The Relationship between Embodied Energy, Embodied Carbon and Environmental Impact

Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 1905 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ming Hu
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Embodied Energy ◽  
Building Performance ◽  
Impact Categories ◽  
Embodied Carbon ◽  
Unexplored Area ◽  
Environmental Impact Categories ◽  
Building Life Cycle

Knowledge and research tying the environmental impact and embodied energy together is a largely unexplored area in the building industry. The aim of this study is to investigate the practicality of using the ratio between embodied energy and embodied carbon to measure the building’s impact. This study is based on life-cycle assessment and proposes a new measure: life-cycle embodied performance (LCEP), in order to evaluate building performance. In this project, eight buildings located in the same climate zone with similar construction types are studied to test the proposed method. For each case, the embodied energy intensities and embodied carbon coefficients are calculated, and four environmental impact categories are quantified. The following observations can be drawn from the findings: (a) the ozone depletion potential could be used as an indicator to predict the value of LCEP; (b) the use of embodied energy and embodied carbon independently from each other could lead to incomplete assessments; and (c) the exterior wall system is a common significant factor influencing embodied energy and embodied carbon. The results lead to several conclusions: firstly, the proposed LCEP ratio, between embodied energy and embodied carbon, can serve as a genuine indicator of embodied performance. Secondly, environmental impact categories are not dependent on embodied energy, nor embodied carbon. Rather, they are proportional to LCEP. Lastly, among the different building materials studied, metal and concrete express the highest contribution towards embodied energy and embodied carbon.

Assessing the environmental impact of the dairy processing industry in the Republic of Ireland

2018 ◽  
Vol 85 (3) ◽  
pp. 396-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Finnegan ◽  
Jamie Goggins ◽  
Xinmin Zhan
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Dairy Products ◽  
Energy Demand ◽  
Impact Categories ◽  
Cumulative Energy ◽  
Republic Of Ireland ◽  
Eutrophication Potential ◽  
Environmental Impact Categories ◽  
The Republic

This Research Communication describes the methodology used and the subsequent results obtained for an assessment of the environmental impact associated with the manufacture of dairy products in the Republic of Ireland. As the Irish dairy industry changes and grows, it is necessary to have a benchmark of the environmental performance of the sector if it is to remain sustainable in the future. In order to estimate the environmental impact, life cycle assessment has been implemented, which has been structured in accordance with the International Organisation for Standardisation guidelines. In this study, the environmental impact categories assessed are terrestrial acidification potential, cumulative energy demand, freshwater eutrophication potential, global warming potential, marine eutrophication potential and water depletion. The main Irish dairy products have been compared across these environmental impact categories in order to derive meaningful results. It is identified that packaging materials, particularly for infant formula, and energy usage, across each of the life cycle stages, should be targeted as these are the most significant contributors to the overall environmental impact.

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