scholarly journals Environmental life-cycle assessment of waste-coal pellets production

Clean Energy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 765-778
Author(s):  
Dawid P Hanak
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Greenhouse Gas Emissions ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Gas Emissions ◽  
Environmental Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Power And Energy ◽  
Energy Intensive Industries ◽  
Waste Coal

Abstract Industrial decarbonization is crucial to keeping the global mean temperature <1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Although unabated coal use needs to be phased out, coal is still expected to remain an important source of energy in power and energy-intensive industries until the 2030s. Decades of coal exploration, mining and processing have resulted in ~30 billion tonnes of waste-coal tailings being stored in coal impoundments, posing environmental risks. This study presents an environmental life-cycle assessment of a coal-processing technology to produce coal pellets from the waste coal stored in impoundments. It has been shown that the waste-coal pellets would result in the cradle-to-gate global warming of 1.68–3.50 kgCO2,eq/GJch, depending on the source of electricity used to drive the process. In contrast, the corresponding figure for the supply of conventional coal in the US was estimated to be 12.76 kgCO2,eq/GJch. Such a reduction in the global-warming impact confirms that waste-coal pellets can be a viable source of energy that will reduce the environmental impact of the power and energy-intensive industries in the short term. A considered case study showed that complete substitution of conventional coal with the waste-coal pellets in a steelmaking plant would reduce the greenhouse-gas emissions from 2649.80 to 2439.50 kgCO2,eq/tsteel. This, in turn, would reduce the life-cycle greenhouse-gas emissions of wind-turbine manufacturing by ≤8.6%. Overall, this study reveals that the use of waste-coal pellets can bring a meaningful reduction in industrial greenhouse-gas emissions, even before these processes are fully decarbonized.

scholarly journals Impact of Cycle Time and Payload of an Industrial Robot on Resource Efficiency

Robotics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 33
Author(s):  
Florian Stuhlenmiller ◽  
Steffi Weyand ◽  
Jens Jungblut ◽  
Liselotte Schebek ◽  
Debora Clever ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Greenhouse Gas Emissions ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Resource Efficiency ◽  
Life Cycle Costs ◽  
Gas Emissions ◽  
Cycle Times ◽  
The Individual

Modern industry benefits from the automation capabilities and flexibility of robots. Consequently, the performance depends on the individual task, robot and trajectory, while application periods of several years lead to a significant impact of the use phase on the resource efficiency. In this work, simulation models predicting a robot’s energy consumption are extended by an estimation of the reliability, enabling the consideration of maintenance to enhance the assessment of the application’s life cycle costs. Furthermore, a life cycle assessment yields the greenhouse gas emissions for the individual application. Potential benefits of the combination of motion simulation and cost analysis are highlighted by the application to an exemplary system. For the selected application, the consumed energy has a distinct impact on greenhouse gas emissions, while acquisition costs govern life cycle costs. Low cycle times result in reduced costs per workpiece, however, for short cycle times and higher payloads, the probability of required spare parts distinctly increases for two critical robotic joints. Hence, the analysis of energy consumption and reliability, in combination with maintenance, life cycle costing and life cycle assessment, can provide additional information to improve the resource efficiency.

scholarly journals Method for a Multi-Vehicle, Simulation-Based Life Cycle Assessment and Application to Berlin’s Motorized Individual Transport

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (18) ◽  
pp. 7302
Author(s):  
Anne Magdalene Syré ◽  
Florian Heining ◽  
Dietmar Göhlich
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Greenhouse Gas Emissions ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Ecological Impacts ◽  
Transport Sector ◽  
Gas Emissions ◽  
Vehicle Simulation ◽  
Transport Simulation ◽  
Whole Life Cycle

The transport sector in Germany causes one-quarter of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions. One potential solution to reduce these emissions is the use of battery electric vehicles. Although a number of life cycle assessments have been conducted for these vehicles, the influence of a transport system-wide transition has not been addressed sufficiently. Therefore, we developed a method which combines life cycle assessment with an agent-based transport simulation and synthetic electric-, diesel- and gasoline-powered vehicle models. We use a transport simulation to obtain the number of vehicles, their lifetime mileage and road-specific consumption. Subsequently, we analyze the product systems’ vehicle production, use phase and end-of-life. The results are scaled depending on the covered distance, the vehicle weight and the consumption for the whole life cycle. The results indicate that the sole transition of drive trains is insufficient to significantly lower the greenhouse gas emissions. However, sensitivity analyses demonstrate that there is a considerable potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with higher shares of renewable energies, a different vehicle distribution and a higher lifetime mileage. The method facilitates the assessment of the ecological impacts of complete car-based transportation in urban agglomerations and is able to analyze different transport sectors.

scholarly journals Life cycle assessment of dryland paddy farming in Ngadirojo District, Pacitan

2018 ◽  
Vol 74 ◽  
pp. 07001
Author(s):  
Priyaji Agung Pambudi ◽  
Tarsoen Waryono
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Greenhouse Gas Emissions ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Chemical Control ◽  
Organic Fertilizer ◽  
Growth Potential ◽  
Gas Emissions ◽  
Mechanical Control ◽  
Weed Growth

The growth of weeds among agricultural crops is a pest that can decrease agricultural production by 47-87%. The aims of this research is to compare organic and an organic fertilizer and compare mechanical and chemical weed and pest control. This research employed a mixed-method, observation, in-depth interviews, and life cycle assessment. The greenhouse gas emissions were released are organic fertilizer 1,87 x 10-3 kg CO2 eq/ha and an organic fertilizer 15 x 101 kg CO2 eq/ha. Thereafter greenhouse gas emissions were released from mechanical control 1,87 x 10-3 kg CO2 eq/ha and chemical control 4,4 x 101 kg CO2 eq/ha. The totally of greenhouse gas emissions was released from dryland paddy farming in management phase is 19,4 x 101 kg CO2 eq/ha. Organic fertilizer more friendly than an organic fertilizer and mechanical control more friendly than chemical control. Mechanical control by farmers must be modified for the increase of effectiveness. The post-mechanical control should be those containing fruit and seed must be burned, meaning there will be not a longer any weed growth potential. Therefore, this mechanism will be able to realize potential production and sustainable dryland paddy farming.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document