• Clean Technology
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.224-230
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• 2009

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been studied on the reuse of glass bottles. The system boundary in this study encompassed from gate to gate such as production and transportation. A 360 mL volume of a glass bottle was selected as the functional unit. The environmental impact assessments was studied on 6 categories including abiotic resource depletion, acidification, eutrophication, global warming, ozone depletion, and photochemical oxidant creation. The results showed that the most significant impact categories were abiotic resource depletion (48.63%) and global warming (46.27%), and the rest categories revealed insignificant impacts. In the whole system, the chemicals used for the new bottle production revealed the major contribution to the environmental impacts (71.24%), followed by the use of electricity (16.74%) and transportation (11.8%). In addition, the environmental impact of sodium silicate to be put into the stage of the new bottle production was found to be 45.68%, causing severe influence on abiotic resource depletion and global warming.

• Advances in environmental research
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.279-290
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• 2013

In this study, a comprehensive model developed to estimate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from urban area with low impact development (LID) and its integrated management practices (IMPs). The model was applied to the actual urban area in Asan Tangjeong district (ATD) as a case study. A rainwater tank (1200 ton) among various LID IMPs generated the highest amount of GHG emissions ($3.77{\times}10^5kgCO_2eq$) and led to the utmost reducing effect ($1.49{\times}10^3kgCO_2eq/year$). In the urban area with LID IMPs, annually $1.95{\times}104kgCO_2eq$ of avoided GHG emissions were generated by a reducing effect (e.g., tap water substitution and vegetation $CO_2$ absorption) for a payback period of 162 years. A sensitivity analysis was carried out to quantitatively evaluate the significance of the factors on the overall GHG emissions in ATD, and suggested to plant alternative vegetation on LID IMPs.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2022.06a
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• pp.975-983
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• 2022

This paper presents an innovative way of integrating scheduling and project controls with the environmental impact of a construction project to track, monitor, and manage environmental emissions at the activity level. As a starting point, scheduling and project controls help monitor the status of a project to provide an assessment of the duration and sequence of activities. Additionally, project schedules can also reflect resource allocation and costs associated with various phases of a construction project. Owners, contractors and construction managers closely monitor tasks or activities on the critical path(s) and/or longest path(s) calculated through network based scheduling techniques. However, existing industry practices do not take into account environmental impact associated with each activity during the life cycle of a project. Although the environmental impact of a project may be tracked in various ways, that tracking is not tied to the project schedule and, as such, generally is not updated when schedules are revised. In this research, a Cradle to Gate approach is used to estimate environmental emissions associated with each activity of a sample project schedule. The research group has also investigated the potential determination of scenarios of lowest environmental emissions, just as project managers currently determine scenarios with lowest cost or time. This methodology can be scaled up for future work to develop a library of unit emissions associated with commonly used construction materials and equipment. This will be helpful for project owners, contractors, and construction managers to monitor, manage, and reduce the carbon footprint associated with various projects.

• KOREAN JOURNAL OF PACKAGING SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.201-210
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• 2022

Expanded polystyrene (EPS) is the most commonly used fresh food refrigeration insulation in Korea and Europe. Moreover, as the use of disposable packaging materials has increased significantly along with non-face-to-face delivery services since the COVID-19 crisis, social issues related to waste disposal are also being raised. Therefore, in this study, the life cycle of EPS boxes for fresh food is focused on the factors that have a large difference between incineration and landfill including recycling in Europe and Korea in the disposal process after use, and raw materials and energy in the manufacturing process, which account for a large portion of the environmental impact value. We tried to compare the environmental impact of evaluation. Overall, the raw material production stage, box manufacturing stage, and packaging stage have similar processes in Europe and Korea, but unlike Europe, Korea, which lacks landfills and incineration facilities, has focused on expanding the recycling rate. It was necessary to do an environmental impact assessment. Data affecting the environment were derived based on 2019 and 2020 data for Korea and 2017 and 2020 data for Europe. In order to predict the future environmental impact assessment, assumptions about the disposal rate in 2025 and 2030 were introduced and evaluated. As a result of this study, it was found that the raw material production stage of EPS boxes, which have similar processes in both Korea and Europe, has the greatest effect on the global warming effect of Korean EPS boxes. However, Korea, which has a relatively high recycling rate in the disposal process compared to incineration and landfill, showed better environmental performance than Europe in most impact indicators except freshwater eutrophication. In particular, Korea has increased the overall recycling rate compared to Europe by replacing various recyclable materials such as building materials and sundries with XPS (extruded polystyrene) recycled materials. In conclusion, it was found that increasing the recycling rate rather than incinerating and landfilling EPS boxes for fresh food in the domestic EPS industry has relatively less environmental load compared to Europe.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.54 no.6
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• pp.800-805
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• 2016

Rapid growth in nanotechnologies promises novel benefits through the exploitation of their unique industrial applications. However, as the production volume of nanomaterials increases, their unintentional exposure to the environment has been occured. Potential impacts of nanoproducts on the environment can be evaluated in the life cycle assessment (LCA). LCA is the systematic analysis of the resource usages and emissions over the life time from the primary resources to the moment of disposal. In this study, we performed LCA for fabrication processes of superhydrophilic oil/water separator using nano-$TiO_2$. $TOTAL^{TM}$ freeware was used to analyze for all fabrication processes, and 6-environmental impact factors (resource depletion, climate change, ozone depletion, acidification, eutropication, and photochemical oxidation) were introduced. In addition, the use of nano-$TiO_2$ in the fabrication of superhydrophilic oil/water separator was actively contributed to the environmental impact factors, compared to the bulk-$TiO_2$.

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.59-68
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• 2016

The application of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to assess the environmental impact of rapeseed cultivation in winter fallow after harvesting rice was investigated and compared with barley cultivation in crop rotation system. Data for input materials were collected and analyzed by 1 ton rapeseed and barley as functional unit. For the Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) the Eco-indicator 95 method has been chosen because this is well documented and regularly applied impact method. From the comparison of impact categories such as greenhouse effect, ozone depletion, acidification, heavy metals, carcinogens, summer smog, and energy resources for 1 ton of final product, emission potential from rapeseed was higher than that from barley. The range from 65 to 96% of these potential came from chemical fertilizer. On the other hand, eutrophication potential from barley was higher than that from rapeseed, mainly came from utilizing the chemical fertilizer. During the cultivation of barley and rape, environmental burden by heavy metals was evaluated by 0.5 Pt, larger than points from other impact categories. The sum of points from all impact categories in barley and rapeseed was calculated to be 0.78 Pt and 0.82 Pt, respectively. From the sensitivity analysis for barley and rapeseed, scenario 1 (crop responses to fertilization level) showed the environmental burden was continuously increased with the amount of fertilization in barley cultivation, while it was not increased only at the optimum crop responses to fertilization in rapeseed (R3). With these results, rapeseed cultivation in winter fallow paddy contributed to the amounts of environmental burden much more than barley cultivation. It is, however, highly determined that environmental weighted point resulted from evaluating both cultivation was not significantly different.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.14 no.2 s.42
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• pp.140-146
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• 2005

In this study, a quantitative environmental impacts assessment was performed for various power technologies with a lift cycle assessment (LCA) method. The LCA is regarded as a useful tool far analyzing diverse environmental impacts at a local, regional, and global aspect. The investigated power plants such as nuclear, coal, and LNC power systems were selected because they took share over $90\%$ of domestic elec-tricity supply in Korea. Furthermore, a wind power technology was included as a representative energy source out of Korean renewable energy systems. According to the three geological aspects, environmental impacts had been categorized into eight types. For these impact categories, characterization had been carried out for comparing environmental burdens of power systems under consideration. Then, normalization had been done in order to gain a better understanding of the relative size among impact categories.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.705-716
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• 2017

As many environmental pollution problems have arisen, various studies related to the environmental evaluation have been carried out in the construction industry. However, there is no methodology for estimating the environmental load quickly for design alternatives of civil facilities in the design phase. This study aim to establish criteria of works information and designed parts which can efficiently estimate environmental loads of PSC beam bridge based on standard quantity at the early design phase. For this purpose, a detailed environmental loads database was constructed by performing Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) based on detailed design data of 25 bridges. In addition, major work with high impact on environmental load were selected, and the analysis of characteristics of environmental load according to the required materials and 8 impact categories were conducted. As a result, the superstructure accounted for 42.91%. In the superstructure, remicon of the material base and PSC beam work occupied 53.13% and 31.25%. In the substructure, remicon, rebar, and cement, which are material base, accounted for more than 93%. It is expected that this major work and material information for each part of bridge can be utilized in the construction of the model, which can estimate the approximate environmental load, reflecting the characteristics of the structure in the design phase.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.40 no.6 s.179
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• pp.485-494
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• 2007

This study was performed to evaluate the environmental qualities of the revetment construction methods and the river-facility materials using Life-Cycle-Assessment(LCA) for the nature-friendly design of close-to-nature river, The investigation results on the environmental qualities of energy and materials used to the close-to-nature river plan showed that the environmental impacts per unit weight increased in the order of gasoline > diesel > cement > wood. The environmental impacts per unit area of revetment construction method exhibited that the environmental loadings increased in the order of gabion > revetment > cribwork. In addition, it was observed that the environmental impact was reduced by improving the materials of zinc-galvanized wire. The model basin investigated in this study was the $0.3km^2$ area of river improvement works in Kyung stream, which is a tributary to the Seomjin river and the second regional stream. The research was conducted based on the 30years by life expectancy of artificial facilities. For the comparisons of revetment techniques with respect to the environmental qualities, the method resulted in the highest environmental loadings. The method using ready-mixed concrete ranked second in the environmental loadings of revetment techniques. The present results of this study are expected to play a beneficial role in the nature-friendly design of close-to-nature river by quantitatively identifying the environmental quality of total procedures (i.e., combination of techniques, selection of river-facility materials, maintenance of river-facility) applied to close-to-nature river plan.

• Clean Technology
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.69-75
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• 2012

In this study, we executed an environmental impact assessment about recycling of ITO (Indium Tin Oxide), used for touch panel. ITO is mainly used to make transparent conductive coatings for touch and flat screen LCD (Liquid Crystal Display), ELD (Emitting Light Device), PDP (Plasma Display Panel). This demand is increasing little by little. but form current status, ITO is discarded than recycling. It is important to recycling ITO for national strategies about resource conservation, and reduce environmental burden. Also Landfill or incineration of ITO cloud be harmful to the human health in the long-term. Material Life Cycle Assessment method (MLCA) was conducted for comparison landfill and recycling of ITO. MLCA would provide more information for environmental issues and potential environmental impacts of ITO. The study includes two scenarios, the basic scenario is recycling of ITO (10, 20, 30%) and the other scenario is landfill of ITO. In addition, amount of carbon dioxide and energy were calculated.