Life cycle Assessment and its Application to Process Selection, Design and Optimisation

The application of life cycle assessment to process optimisation

A methodology for design of environmentally optimal buildings by variable grouping

Summary
This paper reports the results of a life-cycle energy model of a pilot mobile phone “take-back” scheme carried out by the Cellular Phones Take-back Working Group of the European Trade Organisation for the Telecommunication and Professional Electronics Industry (ECTEL) in the United Kingdom (UK) and Sweden during 1997. Using data collected from the scheme, the model calculates a snapshot “energy balance” associated with mobile phone take-back for a variety of phone types and take-back scenarios in the year 1997. It also develops a time-series model for the UK, describing the environmental implications of different take-back scenarios in the future. Because of its emphasis on interactive, dynamic modeling techniques, the methodology developed for the life-cycle model has the potential for wide application in regulatory and industrial decision making.

A Dynamic Life-Cycle Energy Model of Mobile Phone Take-back and Recycling

Lots of eco-designed projects were carried out successfully, and eco-designed products are now on the market. However, it is very difficult for designers and engineers to compare their design projects to those already done and consequently to reuse the knowledge gained. In a more general perspective, a method to take advantage of previous experiences in eco-design is needed. This paper is a contribution to develop a standard for eco-design practices and proposes a framework to characterise both eco-design projects and eco-tools. Forty case studies from the literature were exploited to extract criteria and options to define the framework. The proposed usage-oriented classification of eco-tools, associated with the practical analysis frame of the design projects, was implemented and finally robust enough to characterise 40 projects.

Contribution to the characterisation of eco-design projects

This paper discusses the principles of life cycle assessment (LCP) and design for environment (DFE) and their application in the design and development of the asymmetric digital subscriber loop (ADSL) high speed modem, This application was used as a case study to evaluate the feasibility of incorporating "green" issues into the design cycle, Section II focuses on the green design methodology. It describes some fundamentals and the state-of-the-art of LCA/DFE. It also raises some critical issues that show up in the definition of LCA/DFE methodology. Section III describes the actual case study. It shows how the green design methodology, described in Section Il, is adopted to the project under study. More specifically, it is described how the LCA is introduced into the physical design stage of the product, which assumptions are taken into account for the LCA analysis, and how the analysis affects the usual product design flow. It discusses how the study started by performing an LCA of the ADSL high speed modem R1 (Release 1), with a large emphasis on the analysis of manufacturing processes. Secondly, these LCA results were used as input for the DFE methodology, in order to design a perceived greener product, the ADSI high speed modem R2 (Release 2). The "greenness" of this new product is validated by comparing the two environmental profiles. This case study resulted in a coherent and extensive environmental assessment of some fundamental design options (and the associated manufacturing processes) involved in complex electronic devices. By implementing the results of this LCA into a specific DFE methodology, green design issues have been introduced in the design cycle as just another design constraint to be dealt with.

Green design of telecom products: the ADSL high speed modem as a case study

Alcatel SSD Antwerp (Belgium) has an "ecodesign toolkit" available, in order to reduce the overall environmental impacts of its telecommunications products. This toolkit contains three basic types of "tools": qualitative (guidelines and checklists); semi-quantitative (metrics); and quantitative (LCA based approaches). This paper specifically focuses on product related metrics, which indicate how well a product meets the requirements which are part of the ecodesign guidelines and checklist. This allows product designers to calculate a single value (expressed in environmental penalty points) which indicates the environmental performance of a specific product layout. In addition, the metrics reveals the key issues where environmental product improvements can be achieved. In this paper, the metrics approach is described and compared to two life cycle oriented approaches: life cycle assessment (LCA); and an eco-design analysis using software tool for quick eco-design assessments. The subject of this comparative assessment was a fan unit, a sub-assembly of a telecommunication broadband switching rack.

Metrics for telecom products: essential part of an ecodesign methodology

Alcatel Bell, a telecom manufacturer, and VITO, a research institute, joined forces in defining a first practical case study to introduce environmental issues in the design cycle for electronics. This study has been initiated as a demonstration case intended to make design engineers familiar with the principles of design-for-the-environment (DFE). The subject of the study is a FSN (Full Service Network) product for residential use which has been developed at Alcatel. It contains all basic components of a typical electronic consumer product: a PCB, a number of electronic components and a housing. A life cycle assessment has been performed for each of the different components of the product and for all stages in the life cycle (assembly, use, disposal). Thus the key issues in the design of the product could be identified. One of the main conclusions of the study was that the power consumption over the product`s lifetime when in use is dominant over all other processes involved in its life-cycle. The results of the LCAs have been used to identify options to improve the current design. The results of the study will be further fine-tuned and used within Alcatel to make designers aware of the importance of environmentalmore » impacts of choices made during product design.« less

Introducing environmental issues into the design of complex electronic products: A case study

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Green design of telecom products: the ADSL high speed modem as a case study

Metrics for telecom products: essential part of an ecodesign methodology

Introducing environmental issues into the design of complex electronic products: A case study