• Title/Summary/Keyword: LCA (Life cycle assessment)

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Environmental Analysis of Waste Cable Recycling Process using a Life Cycle Assessment Method (전과정평가기법을 활용한 폐전선 재자원화 공정의 환경성 평가)

  • Jang, Mi-Sun;Seo, Hyo-Su;Park, Hee-Won;Hwang, Yong-Woo;Kang, Hong-Yoon
    • Resources Recycling
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    • v.31 no.1
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    • pp.37-45
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    • 2022
  • The development of the electrical, electronic, and telecommunication industries has increased the share of electricity in total energy consumption. With the enforcement of the Act on the Promotion of the Development, Use, and Diffusion of New and Renewable Energy in 2021, the mandatory supply ratio of new and renewable energy is expected to expand, and the amount of waste cables generated in the stage of replacing and discarding cables used in the industry is also expected to increase. The purpose of this study was to quantify the environmental burden of waste cable recycling through the life cycle assessment (LCA) method. The results showed that the higher the amount of glue contained in the waste cable, the greater was the amount of fine dust and greenhouse gases generated. In addition, by assigning weights to 10 environmental burden items, it was confirmed that the marine aquatic eco-toxicity potential (MAETP) and human toxicity potential (HTP) had the greatest environmental burden. The main causes were identified as heptane and ethanol, which were the glue contained in the waste cable and the cleaning solutions used to remove them. Therefore, it is necessary to refrain from using glue in the cable production process and reduce the environmental burden by reducing the use of waste cable cleaning solutions used in the recycling process or using alternative materials.

Application of the Life Cycle Assessment Methodology to Rice Cultivation in Relation to Fertilization (시비방법별 벼 재배에 따른 전과정평가 방법을 적용한 환경영향 평가)

  • Shin, Joung-Du;Lim, Dong-Kyu;Kim, Gun-Yeob;Park, Mun-Hee;Koh, Mun-Hwan;Eom, Ki-Cheol
    • Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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    • v.22 no.1
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    • pp.41-46
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    • 2003
  • The suitability of the life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to analyze the environmental impact of rice cultivation with different fertilizing systems is investigated. The arst part of an LCA is an inventory of parameters used and 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 total environmental burden. For the life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) the Eco-indicator 95 method has been chosen because this is well documented and regularly applied impact assessment method. The resulting index is called Eco-indicator value. The higher the Eco-indicator value the stronger is the total environmental impact of an analyzed fertilizing system. The rice field experiment conducted in middle parts of korea was chosen as an example for the life cycle impact analysis. In this experiment the treatments were consisted of none fertilizer plot (NF), standard fertilizer plot (SF) applied chemical fertilizers based on soil chemical analysis before rice transplanting, and efflux fertilized plot (EF) applied with pig wastes fermented as the same rates of SF plot as basis on total nitrogen content. The obtained Eco-indicator values were clearly different among the treatments in the rice trial. The total Eco-indicator values for SF and EF have been observed 58 and 38% relative to the NF, respectively. For all the treatments the environmental effects of eutrophication contributed most to the total Eco-indicator value. The results appeared that the LCA methodology is basically suitable to assess the environmental impact associated with different fertilizer applications for rice cultivation. A comparative analysis of the fertilizing system's contribution to global warming and eutrophication is possible.

Comparison of Carbon Emissions between the TBM Method and the NATM Method through LCA Analysis (LCA 분석을 통한 TBM 공법과 NATM 공법의 탄소배출량 비교 연구)

  • Tae-Su Jang;Jae-Soon Khau;Jin-Hyuk Song;Nam-Sun Hwang
    • Explosives and Blasting
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    • v.41 no.4
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    • pp.9-16
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    • 2023
  • To compare the global warming impact of the TBM and NATM method, which are representative tunnel excavation methods, a life cycle assessment was performed for each method. Life cycle assessment should compare the sum of carbon emissions by considering the pre-manufacturing stage, product manufacturing stage, usage stage, and disposal stage. However, access to TBM (Tunnel Boring Machine) manufacturing and disposal data is limited, so I had no choice but to focus on the analysis for the usage stage. In general, carbon emissions during the pre-product manufacturing stage and product manufacturing stage often exceed 90% of carbon emissions throughout the entire process. Therefore, since it is difficult to achieve the analysis goal only by comparing the usage stage, the analysis scope was expanded, and carbon emissions for the process were calculated for the NATM method with access to manufacturing data. As a result of comparing the relative impact on global warming, the carbon emissions of the TBM method were found to be higher than those of the NATM method even though TBM method was only considered for the usage stage. So there it is, the NATM method can be seen as environmentally friendly in the future when considering the impact of climate change (global warming), which has recently attracted attention among environmental impact fields.

Life Cycle Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Livestock and Food Wastes Co-digestive Biogas Production System (전과정평가 방법을 이용한 가축분뇨/음식폐기물 통합 소화형 바이오가스 시설의 온실가스 배출량 평가)

  • Nam, Jae-Jak;Yoon, Young-Man;Lee, Young-Haeng;So, Kyu-Ho;Kim, Chang-Hyun
    • Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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    • v.27 no.4
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    • pp.406-412
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    • 2008
  • Biogas plant with anaerobic digestion is receiving high attention as a facility for both livestock waste treatment and electric power generation. Objective of this study was to perform life cycle assessment (LCA) of a biogas plant which incorporates swine and food waste (7:3) as source materials for biogas production. In addition, the biogas production process was compared with the prevalent composting method as a reference in the aspects of green house gas (GHG) reduction potential and environmental impact. The biogas method was capable of reducing 52 kg $CO_2$ eq. emission per ton of swine/food waste, but the composting process was estimated to emit 268 kg $CO_2$ eq. into air. The biogas method was evaluated as more beneficial to the environment by mitigating the impact on abiotic depletion potential (ADP), global warming potential (GWP), ozone depletion potential (ODP), eutrophication potential (EP), and photochemical ozone creation potential (POCP), but not to acidification potential (AP).

GHG & Energy Goal Management and Low Carbon Railway (온실가스.에너지목표관리와 저탄소 철도)

  • Lee, Cheul-Kyu;Kim, Yong-Ki;Park, Duk-Sin;Lee, Jae-Young
    • Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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    • 2011.10a
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    • pp.2961-2964
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    • 2011
  • Greenhouse gas and energy reduction goal management system is announced to reduce national CO2 emission in 2011. The target business sector of the system has to follow the procedure of the system and get the assessment. The percentage of the national CO2 reduction goad is 30 % compared to the amounts of BAU. In railway business sector, 6 bodies are included in this system so that railway industry cannot stay and sustain its better position any more than other transportation industry. Most of the industry except Railway industry is struggling to develop its product more environmentally friendly and get the 3rd party certification like Eco-labelling and Carbon footprint. To get environmental certification, LCA method has to be applied because life cycle approach is needed to respond current environmental requirement. The purpose of this project is to facilitate railway vehicle manufacturer obtaining the environmental certification termed Korea EPD. By doing so, the environmental performance evaluation tool would be developed and modelled within the LCA framework and therefore applied especially for rail vehicle.

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Practical Optimization Methods for Finding Best Recycling Pathways of Plastic Materials

  • Song, Hyun-Seob;Hyun, Jae Chun
    • Clean Technology
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    • v.7 no.2
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    • pp.99-107
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    • 2001
  • Optimization methodologies have been proposed of find the best environment-friendly recycling pathways of plastic materials based on life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The main difficulty in conducting this optimization study is that multiple environmental burdens have to be considered simultaneously as the cost functions. Instead of generating conservative Pareto or noninferior solutions following multi-objective optimization approaches, we have proposed some practical criteria on how to combine the different environmental burdens into a single measure. The obtained single objective optimization problem can then be solved by conventional nonlinear programming techniques or, more effectively, by a tree search method based on decision flows. The latter method reduces multi-dimensional optimization problems to a set of one-dimensional problems in series. It is expected the suggested tree search approach can be applied to many LCA studies as a new promising optimization tool.

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Carbon Emission Evaluation of Tap Water (수돗물의 탄소 배출량 평가)

  • Kim, Jin-Keun;Jeon, Hong-Jin
    • Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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    • v.25 no.4
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    • pp.511-517
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    • 2011
  • To evaluate carbon emission in water treatment processes, LCA (life cycle assessment) was applied to 8 multi-regional water treatment plants (WTPs) from intake to supply of tap water. Investigation of 8 WTPs revealed that average carbon emission for 1 $m^3$ of tap water was 221 g. Major carbon emission sources in water supply system were intake and supply processes. Meanwhile, mixing process was the main carbon emission source in unit water treatment processes. Carbon emission was proportional to the turbidity and COD of raw water. Intake of better raw water and minimization of energy consumption in unit processes are needed to reduce carbon emission in the WTPs. In addition, comparison of carbon emission among WTPs can be used as a parameter for optimization of operation and maintenance of water treatment processes.

The Estimation for Environmental Impact of Composite Bodyshell Using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) (전과정 평가기법을 통한 복합재 차체의 환경영향 예측)

  • Lee, Sang-Jin;Cho, Se-Hyun;Kim, Jung-Suk;Han, Sung-Ho
    • Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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    • 2009.05a
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    • pp.1634-1642
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    • 2009
  • 본 연구는 자체재질로 복합재 적용한 경우를 기존의 금속구조 차체와 25년 운행기간을 기준으로 환경영향을 비교평가하였다. 본 연구는 알루미늄, 스틸, 하이브리드 복합재, 전체 복합재 인 종 4종의 자체를 고려하였다 네가지 차체 시나리오에 대해 원자재 생산, 차체 제작, 25년 사용 단계, 폐기까지의 환경영향에 대해 LCA 기법을 사용하여 평가하였다. 모든 시나리오 경우, 사용단계가 환경영향 카테고리를 좌우했다. 전제 복합재 시나리오가 매립 또는 소각에 대한 가장 낮은 영향을 주었다. 복합재 차체는 금속자제와 비교해 환경영향 측면에서 30$\sim$50 % 개선효과를 보였다.

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Development of Environment Assessment Software for Electronic Multiple Unit (EMU) (전동차 환경성 평가 S/W RACE의 개발)

  • Kim, Yong-Ki;Lee, Jae-Young;Lee, Cheul-Kyu;Eun, Jong-Hwan
    • Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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    • v.11 no.3
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    • pp.211-215
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    • 2008
  • Generally, an EMU (Electronic Multiple Unit) is manufactured by assembling a large number of components and parts with extensive raw materials. Throughout its entire life cycle, much both the complicated system and long operating period. Therefore, it is necessary to the environmental performance of EMUs from raw materials to waste. In this study, RACE (Rail Assessment for Clean Environment) was developed as the software that can analyze the environmental RACE had several LCI (Life Cycle Inventory) database for main components as well as principal materials in EMUs. In the future, RACE can also be used as a tool for environmental communication between manufacturers and operators. Also, we will improve RACE continuously to assess more easily the environment of rolling stocks EMU for user.