• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.85-92
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• 2004

Environmental issues become one of today's central concerns due to draining natural resources and environmental pollution. Architecture is given a great deal of weight on the evoking environmental pollution. In this point of view, polluting factors in architectural planning and construction were predicted in advance and alternative plans were studied, In investigation of alternative plans, both environmental pollution and economical efficiency of various alternatives were considered. A office building was analyzed for energy consumption and construction environmental load by appling LCA. Applying LCA to a office building includes a total amount of materials and energy consumption, environmental impacts and economical efficiency evaluation. In present study, LCA applied to electrical part of a office building and economical efficiency evaluation was considered.

• International journal of advanced smart convergence
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.162-178
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• 2015

Petroleum based fossil fuels used to power most processes today are non-renewable fuels. This means that once used, they cannot be reproduced for a very long time. The maximum combustion of fossil fuels occurs in automobiles i.e. the vehicles we drive every day. Thus, there is a requirement to shift from these non-renenewable sources of energy to sources that are renewable and environment friendly. This is causing the need to shift towards more environmentally-sustainable transport fuels, preferably derived from biomass, such as biodiesel blends. These blends can be made from oils that are available in abundance or as waste e.g. waste cooking oil, animal fat, oil from seeds, oil from algae etc. Waste Cooking Oil(WCO) is a waste product and so, converting it into a transportation fuel is considered highly environmentally sustainable. Keeping this in mind, a life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed to evaluate the environmental implications of replacing diesel fuel with WCO biodiesel blends in a regular Diesel engine. This study uses Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to determine the environmental outcomes of biodiesel from WCO in terms of global warming potential, life cycle energy efficiency (LCEE) and fossil energy ratio (FER) using the life cycle inventory and the openLCA software, version 1.3.4: 2007 - 2013 GreenDelta. This study resulted in the conclusion that the biodiesel production process from WCO in particular is more environmentally sustainable as compared to the preparation of diesel from raw oil, also taking into account the combustion products that are released into the atmosphere as exhaust emissions.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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• v.8 no.6 s.31
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• pp.581-585
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• 2005

In this study, the environmental impacts of a bogie in the electric motor unit(EMU) were evaluated quantitatively using simplified life cycle assessment(S_LCA). Target was the bogie and life cycle inventory(LCI) database for the bogie was established. The software used for simplified LCA was PASS. Environmental impacts with the parts of the bogie were dependent on their weight significantly. Among impact categories, abiotic resource depletion(ARD) and global warming(GW) were shown dominantly. Global warming was occurred mainly due to the emission of CO₂released from energy consumption and abiotic resource depletion was caused mostly by the consumption of iron ore for the manufacturing of steel. Therefore, the environmental impacts of the bogie could be reduced by the light-weighting of EMU and the improvement of energy efficiency.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.589-593
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• 2007

Due to sustainable development, international environmental regulations have been reinforced continuously. Especially, Kyoto protocol related to energy consumption affects to national production system seriously. Even if railroad is the most environmental- friendly transportation, it is necessary to improve its environment. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a representative tool to evaluate the environment impacts of a product. In the EU's railroad companies, the recycling efficiency and the waste emissions of rolling stocks have improved considering their environment impacts with LCA from a design step. Also, the LCA system of Korean electric motor units has been developed to build an environmentally sound railroad as one of national transportation core technology R&D projects. Therefore, the introduction of LCA will be required to decrease environmental impacts released from rolling stocks in the future.

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

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.41-49
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• 2015

The amount of energy consumed in air ventilation systems of public facilities accounts for 40% of their total energy consumption. To reduce their energy consumption, applying variable speed operation controlled by an inverter with a high-efficiency motor is suggested. Since these methods require higher initial investment costs compared to the existing systems, economic evaluation should be conducted from a long-term perspective. While LCCA(Life Cycle Cost Analysis) model is useful to estimate net savings of alternatives that differs with respect to initial costs and operating costs, the environmental burdens are not considered. On the contrary LCA(Life Cycle Assesment) model is suitable to assess environmental impacts associated with the stages of a product's life but it does not consider costs. In this study, the high-efficient motors are introduced into the air ventilation system of a subway station and a comprehensive analysis on the economic and environmental impacts of the proposed method is conducted by using LCCA and LCA model.

• Clean Technology
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.201-213
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• 1996

Environmental regulation has traditionally focused on specific phenomena and adopted the so-called end-of-pipe approach. Recently, however, the new environmental paradigm is more concerned with minimization of waste generation, efficient material and energy use, pollution prevention, etc. The basis of above concept is that one must consider the environmental impacts of a product not only during its manufacturing stage, but during all life stages. In the present study, the current status of LCA and its importance to environmental impacts have been reviewed. In the usual approach to LCA, screening LCA method has been used to promote international competition and define environmental concerns during semiconductor manufacturing. In the present study, a review of semiconductor manufacturing process and its environmental implication has been conducted to quantify the material and energy requirements, minimize the waste generation, and evaluate production cost. Recommended activities are also specified for process modification to improve the process efficiency.

• Advances in Energy Research
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.1-19
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• 2022

The application of Photovoltaic (PV) power in the building sector, is expanding as part of the ongoing energy transition into renewables. The article addresses the question of sustainability of energy generated from PVs through an environmental assessment of a building-integrated PV system (BIPV) connected to the grid through net metering. Employing retrospective life cycle analysis (LCA), with the CCaLC2 software and ecoinvent data, the article shows that the carrying structure and other balance of system (BOS) components are responsible for a three times higher energy payback time than the literature average. However, total environmental impact can be lowered through reuse or reinstallation of PVs on the same building structure after the 30-year interval. Further ways to improve environmental efficiency include identifying the most polluting materials for each LCA parameter. The results of this study are of interest to researchers and producers of PVs and organizations investing and promoting decentralized power production through PVs.

• Journal of KIBIM
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.9-17
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• 2016

Currently whole-house refurbishment for substantial energy efficiency improvement of existing housing stock is needed to achieve the targeted 80% CO2 emission reduction. As whole-house refurbishment requires a larger capital investment for lower CO2 emission, the simultaneous use of Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodologies are recommended to generate affordable refurbishment solutions. However, two methodologies are difficult to use due to a lack of proper LCC and LCA datasets. As a response to the current problems, many researchers explore potentials in Building Information Modelling (BIM) to improve current construction practice. As a result, a BIM tool - IES IMPACT (Integrated Material Profile And Costing Tool) - has been introduced to the UK construction industry for simultaneous calculation of LCC and LCA. Thus, this research aims at examining the capability and limitation of the IES VE/IMPACT as a BIM tool for whole-house refurbishment. This research reveals that the IES VE/IMPACT is feasible for whole-house refurbishment by providing LCC and LCA information simultaneously for informed decision on refurbishment solution selection. This research shed lights on the current problems lying on the data exchange between two different BIM tools. It is revealed that additional efforts from construction professionals and industry are required to make reliable BIM objects library with LCC and LCA datasets.

• Clean Technology
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.269-274
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• 2018

In this study, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of wet tissue manufacturing process was performed. The wet tissue manufacturing process consists of preparation of wetting agent (chemical liquid), impregnation of nonwoven fabric into wetting agent and primary and secondary packaging. Data and information were collected on the input and output of the actual process from a certain company and the database of the Korea Ministry of Environment and some foreign countries (when Korean unavailable) were employed to connect the upper and the lower process flow. Based on the above and the potential environmental impacts of the wet tissue manufacturing process were calculated. As a result of the characterization, Ozone Layer Depletion (OD) is 3.46.E-06 kg $CFC_{11}$, Acidification (AD) is 5.11.E-01 kg $SO_2$, Abiotic Resource Depletion (ARD) is $3.52.E+00\;1yr^{-1}$, Global Warming (GW) is 1.04.E+02 kg $CO_2$, Eutrophication (EUT) is 2.31.E-02 kg ${PO_4}^{3-}$, Photochemical Oxide Creation (POC) was 2.22.E-02 kg $C_2H_4$, Human Toxicity (HT) was 1.55.E+00 kg 1,4 DCB and Terrestrial Ecotoxicity (ET) was 5.82.E-04 kg 1,4 DCB. In order to reduce the environmental impact of the manufacturing process, it is necessary to improve the overall process as other general cases and change the raw materials including packaging materials with less environmental impact. Conclusively, the energy consumed in the manufacturing process has emerged as a major issue, and this needs to be reconsidered other options such as alternative energy. Therefore, it is recommended that a process system should be redesigned to improve energy efficiency and to change to an energy source with lower environmental impact. Due to the nature of LCA, the final results of this study can be varied to some extent depending on the type of LCI DB employed and may not represent of all wet tissue manufacturing processes in the current industry.