A Life Cycle Assessment on a Filter and Fuse Board

Transcription

1 A Life Cycle Assessment on a Filter and Fuse Board Mansour Jalali Department of Chemical Engineering II, Lund Institute of Technology P. O. Box 124, S Lund, Sweden The purpose of the study was to perform a Life Cycle Assessment and a material declaration for a filter and fuse board which is made of Ericsson Microwave Systems AB (EMW). The material declaration was performed with a method called elemental analysis. The object subjected to analysis is ground to fragments of a size of one millimetre. Then an amount of the sample dissolves in aqua regia. The solution will then be screened with some masspectrometrical methods to determine the material contents of the sample. The Life Cycle Assessment was done according to the methodology that SETAC (Society of Environmental Toxicology And Chemistry) has established and as LCA-tool the program Ecolab has been used. The result indicates that emissions to those environmental effect categories, which have been studied in this work, are all except depletion of resources dominated by the operating phase. The reasons are the long life of the power supply board which is estimated to be more than 20 years and also the use of electricity that most of it is produced from combustion of fossil fuels. Depletion of non-renewable resources is the category, which is dominated by manufacturing phase and this originates from use of raw materials to produce components. Introduction The purpose of this work was to perform a Life Cycle Assessment and a material declaration for a filter and fuse board made of Ericsson Microwave system AB (EMW). The material declaration was carried out through a method called element analysis. The object of analysis grinds to fragments of a size of one millimeter. Then an amount of the sample dissolves in aqua regia. The solution will then be screened with some masspectrometrical methods to determine the material content of the sample. The Life Cycle Assessment was done according to the methodology that SETAC (Society of Environmental Toxicology And Chemistry) has established (Figure 1) and as LCA-tool the program Ecolab (Nordic Port AB) has been used. Goal definition Inventory analysis Classification Characterization Valuation Environmental load Estimation Parameters classifies in different environmental effect categories Potential environmental impact estimation Environmental impact screening Environmental impact Assessment Figure 1. Illustration of different parts of Life Cycle Assessment according to SETAC 1

2 Goal definition The goal of this study was to do a Life Cycle Assessment and a materialdeclaration on a filter and fuse board made of Ericsson Microwave system AB. Environmental impact from different part of the process and the material content of components should be identified. Inventory Design. Under the design of the board 1,25 persons have worked with the project in 150 days. It has occurred four businesses travelling during the design time, two flights to Stockholm and two flights to Visby. Manufacturing. The board is manufactured at Flextronix AB in Visby. The electricity used in this study for the manufacturing phase is a mixture of Swedish electricity from different sources like hydro power, nuclear power etc. Then the filter and fuse board is transported to England with air cargo for some testing and back to Gävle in Sweden with truck. After a couple of tests in Gävle the board is ready for transport via air to ordering company in Japan. Running phase. Japanese electricity has been used for the user phase, which is mostly produced from combustion of fossil fuels. The lifetime of the filter and fuse board has been estimated to be more than 20 years. The maximum power lost during 20 years is calculated to be 4380 KWh and 70% of it that is 3066 KWh has been used in calculations. Classification The classification was made according to categories and sub-categories in Table 1. Table 1. List of categories and sub-categories used. Impact category Sub-categories Characterization-factor unit 1. Raw material depletion 2. Ecological impacts 1.1 Energy Non-renewable 1.2 Materials Non-renewable 2.1 Global Warming (GWP) 2.2 Ozone depletion (ODP) 2.3 Acidification (AP) 2.4 Eutrophication (NP) 2.5 Photo-oxidant formation 1/Kg resource reserve 1/Kg resource reserve g CO 2-ekv./Kg g CFC-11ekv./Kg g SO 2-ekv./Kg g PO 4-ekv/Kg g C 2H 2-ekv/Kg Characterization Depletion of non-renewable energy and materials. Non-renewable resources have been taken into account only and the reason is that using these has bigger environmental impact than renewable resources. The reserve base method has been used and it defines as follows: W ij =1/R ij 2

3 where R ij is available resources in the nature. The unit of characterization factors become kg -1 therefor the unit of impact categories are kg resource/kg resource reserve. Figur 2. Raw material depletion for manufacturing, using and transports. Global warming. Global Warming Potentials (GWPs) have been used as weighting factors. The GWPs describe the contribution to radiative forcing, taking into consideration the atmospheric lifetimes and absorption properties of the gases. The GWPs are expressed as CO 2 -equivalents. Characterization factors have the unit gram CO 2 -equivalents per kilogram of the emission in question. GCO2 Figure 3. Global warming potentials from manufacturing, running and transports. Acidification. This impact category treats those matters that contribute to acidification of land and sea. The characterization factor that has been chosen is the fractional of released protons calculated from ability of one gram of the matter in question to release hydrogen ions in comparison to ability of releasing hydrogen ions from one gram of SO 2. The unit is SO 2 - equivalents. Acidification stands for decreasing of PH-value in land- and aqua-systems. Those compounds that contribute most to the acidification are SO 2, NO x, NH 3, HCl and other acids. 3

4 gso2 Figure 4. Acidification from manufacturing, using and transports. Eutrophication.When the nutritional balance is disturbed so that the amount of nutrients increases it is called eutrophication. In aquatic systems this leads to increased production of biomass which can cause lack of oxygen and bottom death. In terrestrial systems deposition of nitrogen-containing matter leads to changing of species differentiation. The potential contribution to eutrophication will be expressed here as PO 4 -equvalents, which is the ability of one gram of the emission in question to help growing the biomass in comparison to the ability of one gram of phosphates. Figure 5. Eutrophication from manufacturing, running and transports. Photo-oxidant formation. Formation of ozone and other oxidants near the ground have increased during the last century. These have toxic effects on human and plants. Creation of high concentration of oxidants and ozone in the troposphere is coupled to emission of hydrocarbons, and presence of sunlight and NO x. The potential contribution to oxidant formation here is expressed in C 2 H 2 -equivalents, which is a measure of the ability of the emission of question to create oxidants in comparison to the same ability of ethene. 4

5 Figure 6. Photo-oxidant formation from manufacturing, running and transports. Result and discussion The result indicates that emissions to those environmental effect categories, which have been studied here, are all except depletion of materials dominated by operating phase. The reasons are the long life of the power supply board which is estimated to be more than 20 years and also the use of electricity that most of it is produced from combustion of fossil fuels. Depletion of not renewable resources is the category, which is dominated by manufacturing phase and this originates from use of raw materials to produce components. Those parts of the boards lifecycle that have the most environmental impact are as follows Operating phase Manufacturing of components Electricity consumption during the design and manufacturing Air-cargo The material declaration could not be done for every single component. It was performed on the whole board according to a method called elemental analysis. The object subjected to analysis is ground to fragments of a size of one millimetre. Then an amount of the sample dissolves in aqua regia. The solution will then be screened with some masspectrometrical methods to determine the material contents of the sample. According to the report from performing company all concentrations are with in ±50% of the reported values which is a very high uncertainty. Litrature Cited Olsson J.; Recovery of plastic packaging, an environmental comparison of different wastes, MSc Thesis, Dept. of Chemical Engineering II, Lund University Lindfors L.G.; Nordic guidelines on life-cycle assessment Nordic port ; about the manual and EcoLab-manual för EcoLab v.5.1.2, Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan; Miljöeffekter, kompendium I miljövård, del 4, miljöcentrum, Stockholm Jonsson T.; En livscykelanalys utförd på ett slamupparbetningsprojekt, Malmodin J.; En Livscykelanalys utförd på ett genomsnittligt abonnemang I telias GSM-900, Birgerson B.; Stemer O.; Zimerson E.; Kemiska hälsorisker, toxikologi I kemisk persperktiv 1989 Grunewald A.; Gustavsson J.; End- Of-Life treatment of radio base station transceivers in Europe, Japan and USA, a life cycle assessment study Tillman A. M.; livscykelanalys, teknisk miljöplanering chalmers tekniska högskola Chalmers University of technology; Competence Center in Environmental assessment of 5

6 Product and Material systems (CPM),, Gothenburg. Deville.tep.chalmers.se/SPINE_EIM/toppage1.html Malmodin J.; Ericssons internal database, Product ecology Consultants (Pre ), Simas pro 4.0 demo. Received for review February 20,