• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.201-210
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• 2014

The present study proposes a phased model to assess the lifecycle $CO_2$ amount of concrete structures. The considered system boundary is from cradle to recycling, which includes constituent material, transportation, batching and mixing in ready-mixed concrete plant, use and demolition of structure, and crushing and recycling of demolished concrete. The $CO_2$ uptake of concrete by carbonation during lifetime (40 years) of a structure and the recycling life (20 years) after demolition is estimated using a simple approach generalized to predict the carbonation depth from the surfaces of concrete element and recycled aggregates. Based on the proposed phased model, a performance evaluation table is realized to straightforwardly examine the lifecycle $CO_2$ amount of concrete structures. The proposed model demonstrates that the contribution of ordinary portland cement (OPC) to lifecycle $CO_2$ emission of the concrete structure occupies approximately 85%. Furthermore, the $CO_2$ uptake is estimated to be approximately 15~18% of the lifecycle $CO_2$ emissions of concrete structures, which corresponds to be 19~22% of the emissions from OPC production. Overall, the proposed $CO_2$ performance table is expected to be practically useful as a guideline to determine the $CO_2$ emission or uptake at each phase of concrete structures.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.494-500
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• 2006

Life Cycle Assessment(LCA) is an environmental assessment tool for evaluating environmental burdens associated with products, processes and activities from the raw material acquisition stage to the end-of-life stage. End-of-life stage as well as other processes requires a reliant database in order to increase the confidence in the LCA results. In this study, the flow of Personal Computer(as PC) in the end-of-life stage was examined and the database of two scenarios has been established, i.e. one is part reuse and the other is no part reuse, in the end-of-life phase of PC. Also, key environmental issues were identified by carrying out LCA on a PC in the end-of-life phase for eight environmental impact categories. The 'ozone layer depletion' contributes the highest environmental impact due to generation of $Cl_2$ gas during the incineration of waste plastics. In addition, the scenario 1(part reuse) is more environmentally sound than the scenario 2(no part reuse) when comparing two scenarios.

• Land and Housing Review
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.109-120
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• 2021

Global warming due to increased carbon dioxide is perceived as one of the factors threatening the future. Efforts are being made to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in each industry around the world. In particular, environmental loads and impacts during the life cycle of SOC structures and buildings have been quantitatively assessed through a quantitative method called Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). However, the construction sector has gone through difficulty in quantitative assessment for several reasons: 1) LCI DB is not fully established; 2) the life cycle is very long; 3) the building structures are unique. Therefore, it takes enormous effort and time to carry out LCA. Rather than estimating carbon emissions with accuracy, this study aims to present a simplified estimation model that allows owners or designers to easily estimate carbon dioxide emissions with little effort, given that rapid and rough decisions regarding environmental load reduction are to be made. This study performs the LCA using data from 25 road construction projects across the country, followed by multiple regression analyses to derive a simplified carbon estimation model (SLCA). The study also carries out a comparative analysis with values estimated by performing a typical LCA. The comparison analysis shows an error rate of less than 5% for 16 road projects.

• Clean Technology
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.388-392
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• 2017

In this study, a quantitative environmental impact assessment for the production process of breathable film was conducted employing Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. Among the various categories, Global Warming (GW) accounted for the highest impact (97%) followed by Human Toxicity (HT). And the key substances of various impact categories included HDPE, PP, and electricity. In the production process, the high impact resulted from mixing process (57%), lamination process (29%), and extruder process (10%). To improve environmental impact, it is necessary to design a new process system that reduces the amount of electricity used and that increases production yields, if raw materials such as HDPE and PP owe excluded.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2016.05a
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• pp.259-260
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• 2016

Recently, world-wide focusing on the interest for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions associated with climate change and global warming, South Korea also has set up a national greenhouse gas reduction target and action plans seeking to achieve them. In particular, in the construction area, to encourage green building certification of the building and carbon labeling acquisition of building products, in order to reduce the environmental impact caused by the industrial activities have been in steady efforts. Therefore, this study estimates the life cycle carbon footprint of building construction materials applied to carbon emissions reduction technology and analyzes the results. Through the CO₂ emissions analysis in construction phase and maintenance phase of the building, it provides basic resource for future research expansion and establishes a step-by-step whole life cycle carbon emissions reduction plan in new construction and existing buildings.

• Clean Technology
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.9-14
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• 2018

In this study, Material life cycle evaluation was performed to analyze the environmental impact characteristics of TiN-Zr membrane manufacturing process. The software of MLCA was Gabi. Through this, environmental impact assessment was performed for each process. Transition metal nitrides have been researched extensively because of their properties. Among these, TiN has the most attention. TiN is a ceramic materials which possess the good combination of physical and chemical properties, such as high melting point, high hardness, and relatively low specific gravity, high wear resistance and high corrosion resistance. With these properties, TiN plays an important role in functional materials for application in separation hydrogen from fossil fuel. Precursor TiN was synthesized by sol-gel method and zirconium was coated by ball mill method. The metallurgical, physical and thermodynamic characteristics of the membranes were analyzed by using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDS), X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Thermo Gravimetry/Differential Thermal Analysis (TG/DTA), Brunauer, Emmett, Teller (BET) and Gas Chromatograph System (GP). As a result of characterization and normalization, environmental impacts were 94% in MAETP (Marine Aquatic Ecotoxicity), 2% FAETP (Freshwater Aquatic Ecotoxicity), 2% HTP (Human Toxicity Potential). TiN fabrication process appears to have a direct or indirect impact on the human body. It is believed that the greatest impact that HTP can have on human is the carcinogenic properties. This shows that electricity use has a great influence on ecosystem impact. TiN-Zr was analyzed in Eco-Indicator '99 (EI99) and CML 2001 methodology.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.405-412
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• 2011

Environmental impact by proposed pump and treatment remediation of groundwater contaminated with TCE over 0.6 mg/L down to 0.005 mg/L was assessed for 30 years operation in an industrial park. Total amount of groundwater treated was $2.96{\times}10^7m^3$ and the amount of TCE removed was 17.6 kg at most. The life cycle assessment was used to estimate the environmental cost and environmental benefit and their effects on the environment could be analyzed. Most of the environmental cost was accrued from electricity generation for 30 years pump operation, which includes energy consumption, resources consumption such as coal, crude oil, emission of global warming gas and acid gas into air, waste water production, and waste generation. Environmental impact could be quantified with a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) model for soil and groundwater remediation and normalized based upon consumption and emission quantities per capita in the world. Among the normalized values, acidification material release was the most significant.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.515-522
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• 2014

In order to quantitatively evaluate the effect of fly ash (FA) as partial replacement of cement on the life-cycle environmental impact of concrete, a comprehensive database including 4023 laboratory mixes and 2120 plant mixes was analyzed. The environmental loads on the life-cycle assessment were quantitatively converted into environmental impact indicators through categorization, characterization, normalization and weighting process. The life-cycle environmental impacts of concrete could be classified into three categories including global warming, photochemical oxidant creation and abiotic resource depletion. Furthermore, these environmental impacts of concrete was decreased with the increase of the replacement level of FA and governed by the unit content of ordinary portland cement (OPC). As a result, simple equations to assess the environmental impact indicators could be formulated as a function of the unit content of binder and the replacement level of FA.

• Clean Technology
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.241-250
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• 2014

In this study, performance and environmental characteristics of cyclone vacuum cleaners are analyzed and product improvement methods are investigated to minimize environmental effect of the cleaners using the result. A simplified LCA method is used to analyze environmental characteristics of the cyclone vacuum cleaners. Two cyclone vacuum cleaners with similar specifications are chosen for the experiment. Typical characteristics of cyclone vacuum cleaners such as energy consumption, suction force, noise and temperature are measured and compared. Most environmental effect was caused by the energy consumption in use phase of life cycle. Some ideas are created to reduce energy consumption of the vacuum cleaners in use phase like installing baffle, and methods to extend exchange period of filter. It is analyzed how recyclability rate of vacuum cleaners could be improved to reduce the environmental effect in whole life of the vacuum cleaners.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.105-112
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• 2005

This study aims at evaluating the environmental impacts stemmed from the End-of-Life Vehicle(ELV) treatment systems in Korea, using Life Cycle Assessment(LCA) method. In this study, both environmental burden from the ELV dismantling process & recycling processes and environmental benefit which were derived from the avoided environmental impacts by substituting recycled materials for virgin materials were considered. First of all, the key issues which were defined as the environmental aspects that account for more than $1\%$ out of the total environmental impacts were identified from the Life Cycle Impact Assessment(LCIA). $CO_2$, crude oil, natural gas, coal, etc. were found out to be the key issue parameters. From the LCI Analysis and LCIA studies, it was shown that the significant environmental aspects were related with the recycling process of ferro scrap, the shredding process of compressed car bodies and the dismantling process of end-of-life engines. In particular, the recycling process of ferro scrap has the most significant effects on the environmental impacts of the ELV treatment systems. Based on these results, it is recommended to improve the recycling process of ferro scrap in order to make the ELV treatment systems more environmentally sound.