• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
• /
• v.22 no.2
• /
• pp.35-43
• /
• 2014

The application of the Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methodology to analyze the environmental burden of appling the digestates to corn field including different swine waste treatment systems was investigated. The first part of LCA is an inventory of parameters used to emissions released due to the system under investigation. In the following step, the Life Cycle Impact Assessment, the inventory data were analyzed and aggregated in order to finally get one index representing the each environmental burden. Each corn field applied with the aerobic and anaerobic digestates including different swine waste treatment systems was used as an example for the life cycle impact analysis. With analyzing the agricultural environmental burden, it observed that the effect of corn field applied aerobic digestate including digestion system was 7.6 times higher at eutrophication effects, but global warming potential effect was 0.9 times less than its applied anaerobic digestate.

• Land and Housing Review
• /
• v.3 no.4
• /
• pp.399-406
• /
• 2012

One-third of total energy and 50% of $CO_2$ emissions arise from construction phase. Because of this global amount of energy consumption and $CO_2$ emission, we must do our best to solve this problem. But our existing ways of meeting this problem has focused on the energy consumption saving of the construction and dwelling stage. On the other hand, we has been treated too lightly for handling the $CO_2$ emissions problem during the maintenance management and the demolition process so far,. In this paper, we quantitatively predicted and evaluated the environmental load in each construction step during all life cycle. And, we developed the environmental load assessment program for each construction step. And we proposed the reliable decision support model for objective and reliable environmental load assessment and reduction. This result must help the development of construction technology and low carbon & green growth.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
• /
• v.45 no.6
• /
• pp.1143-1152
• /
• 2012

We established a top-down methodology to estimate carbon footprint as national mean value (reference) with the statistical data on agri-livestock incomes in 2007. We also established LCI (life cycle inventory) DB by a bottom-up methodology with the data obtained from interview with farmers from 4 large-scale farms at Gunsan, Jeollabuk-do province to estimate carbon footprint in 2011. This study was carried out to compare top-down methodology and bottom-up methodology in performing LCA (life cycle assessment) to analyze the difference in GHGs (greenhouse gases) emission and carbon footprint under conventional rice cultivation system. Results of LCI analysis showed that most of $CO_2$ was emitted during fertilizer production and rice cultivation, whereas $CH_4$ and $N_2O$ were mostly emitted during rice cultivation. The carbon footprints on conventional rice production system were 2.39E+00 kg $CO_2$-eq. $kg^{-1}$ by top-down methodology, whereas 1.04E+00 kg $CO_2$-eq. $kg^{-1}$ by bottom-up methodology. The amount of agro-materials input during the entire rice cultivation for the two methodologies was similar. The amount of agro-materials input for the bottom-up methodology was sometimes greater than that for top-down methodology. While carbon footprint by the bottom-up methodology was smaller than that by the top-down methodology due to higher yield per cropping season by the bottom-up methodology. Under the conventional rice production system, fertilizer production showed the highest contribution to the environmental impacts on most categories except GWP (global warming potential) category. Rice cultivation was the highest contribution to the environmental impacts on GWP category under the conventional rice production system. The main factors of carbon footprints under the conventional rice production system were $CH_4$ emission from rice paddy field, the amount of fertilizer input and rice yield. Results of this study will be used for establishing baseline data for estimating carbon footprint from 'low carbon certification pilot project' as well as for developing farming methods of reducing $CO_2$ emission from rice paddy fields.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
• /
• v.28 no.2
• /
• pp.156-165
• /
• 2017

This study quantitatively assessed the environmental impacts of fuel cell (FC) systems by performing life cycle assessment (LCA) and analyzed their energy efficiencies based on energy return on investment (EROI) and electrical energy stored on investment (ESOI). Molten carbonate fuel cell (MCFC) system and polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) system were selected as the fuel cell systems. Five different paths to produce hydrogen ($H_2$) as fuel such as natural gas steam reforming (NGSR), centralized naptha SR (NSR(C)), NSR station (NSR(S)), liquified petroleum gas SR (LPGSR), water electrolysis (WE) were each applied to the FCs. The environmental impacts and the energy efficiencies of the FCs were compared with rechargeable batteries such as $LiFePO_4$ (LFP) and Nickel-metal hydride (Ni-MH). The LCA results show that MCFC_NSR(C) and PEMFC_NSR(C) have the lowest global warming potential (GWP) with 6.23E-02 kg $CO_2$ eq./MJ electricity and 6.84E-02 kg $CO_2$ eq./MJ electricity, respectively. For the impact category of abiotic resource depletion potential (ADP), MCFC_NGSR(S) and PEMFC_NGSR(S) show the lowest impacts of 7.42E-01 g Sb eq./MJ electricity and 7.19E-01 g Sb eq./MJ electricity, respectively. And, the energy efficiencies of the FCs are higher than those of the rechargeable batteries except for the case of hydrogen produced by WE.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
• /
• v.26 no.2
• /
• pp.303-312
• /
• 2012

Water supply and sewerage systems are the large-scale urban infrastructure ejecting large amount of environmental load over the life-cycle. Therefore, it is important not only to optimize in the aspect of economical superiority and process efficiency but also to consider earth scale environmental impact. This study aimed to suggest the establishment of life cycle management(LCM) system as an integrated management solution in urban water supply and sewerage systems. As a result, the methodology for LCM system consisting of life cycle assessment(LCA), life cycle cost(LCC), life cycle $CO_{2}(LCCO_{2})$ and life cycle energy(LCE) was developed. Also, several case studies using the latest statistics data of water supply and sewerage systems were carried out to investigate the field applicability of LCM.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
• /
• 2011.11a
• /
• pp.149-150
• /
• 2011

Recently, Goverment's Energy-saving policy in Korea as 'Green Growth' is very remarkable effort. By intensive poliicies, the private is encouraged to participate in policy. Especially, it is very important in the field of architecture and we have to work for construction of law system. However, these efforts of the government buildings for energy efficiency in use stage is as mandatory system that may occur in the construction phase and the enviromental impact of greenhouse gas reductions is not affected. For this reason, Assess the amount of the energy consumption and CO₂ emissioont of Government Buildings in 2010 ordered by PPS(Public Procurement Service) in the construction phase and suggest to recognize the need for legal restrictions.

• Resources Recycling
• /
• v.27 no.1
• /
• pp.64-73
• /
• 2018

This study aims to analysis the environmental impact on waste catalyst recycling technology using entire life cycle assessment. Environmental impacts consist of the five categories of impacts: global warming, resource depletion, acidification, eutrophication, and photochemical oxide production. The waste catalyst recycling presently have a GWP 3.53 ton $CO_2$ equivalent/ton, a ADP 0.017 ton Sb equivalent/ton, a AP 0.051 $SO_2$ equivalent/ton, a EP 0.0092 $PO{_4}^{3-}$ equivalent/ton, a 0.0019 ton $C_2H_4$ equivalent/ton. The smelting reduction process is the greatest contributor to all categories of environmental impacts in waste catalyst recycling. Electricity used in the smelting reduction process is the major contributor of all impact categories.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
• /
• v.29 no.9
• /
• pp.931-937
• /
• 2012

In this study, we assessed environmental impacts of compound humidifiers using environmental life cycle assessment and presented the ways to improvements in energy consumption of them. We found eco-design parameters and $CO_2$-eq emissions in each stage of raw material acquisition, manufacturing, transportation, use and disuse in life cycle of the compound humidifiers. The highest $CO_2$ emission is found to be in the stage of use among all stages of life cycle, which is mainly due to power consumption in thermal heating of heating coil for sterilization during humidification. The power consumption and $CO_2$ emission in the stage of use can be reduced to 1/4 and 1/3 at the highest estimate through improvement of sterilization method, respectively. We suggested the replacement of conventional thermal heating coil by ultra violet light-emitting diodes (UV-LED) for sterilization and then presented the experimental results on the sterilization effects of UV-LEDs.

• Clean Technology
• /
• v.28 no.1
• /
• pp.9-17
• /
• 2022

Electrochemical carbon dioxide (CO₂) reduction technology, one of the promising solutions for climate change, can convert CO₂, a representative greenhouse gas (GHG), into valuable base chemicals using electric energy. In particular, carbon monoxide (CO), among various candidate products, is attracting much attention from both academia and industry because of its high Faraday efficiency, promising economic feasibility, and relatively large market size. Although numerous previous studies have recently analyzed the GHG reduction potential of this technology, the assumptions made and inventory data used are neither consistent nor transparent. In this study, a comparative life cycle assessment was carried out to analyze the potential for reducing GHG emissions in the electrochemical CO production process in a more transparent way. By defining three different system boundaries, the global warming impact was compared with that of a fossil fuel-based CO production process. The results confirmed that the emission factor of electric energy supplied to CO₂-electrolyzers should be much lower than that of the current national power generation sector in order to mitigate GHG emissions by replacing conventional CO production with electrochemical CO production. Also, it is important to disclose transparently inventory data of the conventional CO production process for a more reliable analysis of GHG reduction potential.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2010.06a
• /
• pp.153-153
• /
• 2010

The world is moving towards a post-carbon society and needs clean and renewable energy for sustainable development. There are many methodological approaches which are helping this shift based on analyzed data about energy resources and which focus on limited types of energy including liquid fossil, solid fossil, gaseous fossil, and biomass (e.g. IPCC Guidelines, ISO 14064-1, WRI Protocol, etc.). We should also consider environmental impact (e.g. greenhouse gas emissions, water use, etc.) and the economic cost of the renewable energy to make a better decision. Recently, researchers have addressed the environmental impact of new technologies which include photovoltaics, wind turbines, hydroelectric power, and biofuel. In this work, we analyze the environmental impact with a carbon emission factor to present a correlation between $CO_2$ emission and the cost of energy resources standardized by the energy output. In addition, we reviewed Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as another methodology. Researchers who are studying energy systems have ignored the impacts of entire energy systems, e.g. the extraction and processing of fossil fuels. In power sector, the assessment should include extraction, processing, and transportation of fuels, building of power plants, production of electricity, and waste disposal. Therefore LCA could be more suitable tool for energy cost and environmental impact estimation.