• Resources Recycling
• /
• v.32 no.2
• /
• pp.12-18
• /
• 2023

In 2018, the demand for silver (referred to as Ag) in the electrical and electronics sector was 249 million tons. The demand stood at 81 million tons in the solar module production sector. Currently, due to the rapid increase in solar module installation, the demand for silver is increasing drastically in Korea. However, Korea's natural metal resources and reserves are insufficient in comparison to their consumption, and the domestic silver ore self-sufficiency rate was as low as 2.2% as of 2021. This implies that a recycling technology is necessary to recover valuable metal resources contained in the waste plating solution generated in the metal industry. Therefore, this study compared and analyzed, the results of the impact evaluation through life cycle assessment according to an improvement in the process of recovery of valuable metals in the waste plating solution. The process improvement resulted in reducing GWP (Global Warming Potential) and ADP(Abiotic Depletion Potential) by 50% and 67%, respectively. The GWP of electricity and industrial water was reduced by 98% and 93%, respectively, which significantly contributed to the minimization of energy and water consumption. Thus, the improvement in recycling technology has a high potential to reduce chemical and energy use and improve resource productivity in the urban mining industry.

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

• Proceedings of the Korea Society for Energy Engineering kosee Conference
• /
• 2004.11a
• /
• pp.277-282
• /
• 2004

본 연구에서는 환경경영의 중요한 수단으로 대두되고 있는 전과정분석(Life Cycle Analysis; LCA)을 통해 원자력 발전기술을 평가한 주요 사례의 분석과정과 결과들을 비교하였다. 이는 선진국들이나 글로벌 선진기업들에서 채택하기 시작한 글로벌 환경친화성의 입증 요구 추세 속에서, 모든 재화의 생산에 전력은 필수 투입물이라는 점에서 그 중요성을 감안하여 수행되었다. 본 연구에서는 국내 전력의 40% 이상 공급을 담당하고 있는 원자력발전 기술을 중심으로 비교하였다. 우리나라의 대표적인 연구를 간 비교 결과 그 값의 차이는 최대 10＾5 정도에 이르러, 이는 외국의 경우 10＾1 수준의 차이를 보이는 데 비해 다소 많은 것으로 조사되었다. 이러한 차이는 사례에 따라 모형의 단순화 정도에 기인한 것으로 판단되며, 이는 전력의 타산업 기반성이나 국내 전력LCA 분석능력의 함양이 중요하다는 점에 비추어 시급히 개선되어야 할 것이라 제안한다.

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
• /
• v.13 no.1
• /
• pp.115-123
• /
• 2005

In this study, life cycle assessment(LCA) technique was employed to evaluate the environmental impact of material recycling of polyethylene terephthalate(PET) bottle. Life cycle inventory was established based on the data collected from recycling companies in Korea. Simapro 5.0 LCA software and Eco-indicator 95 index were used for the analysis. The biggest impact by the material recycling of PET bottle on the environmental category was the global warming. It is because melting and production of the recycled PET product consume a significant amount of electricity and energy. In the environmental pollution discharge, $CO_2$ emission was the highest, followed by NOx. This is probably due to the use of diesel and gasoline in the consumption of electricity and transportation. All the environmental impact showed (-) value except the ozone layer depletion, which means that the material recycling of PET bottle is environmentally fair. The use of recycled PET product greatly reduced the environmental impact.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
• /
• v.22 no.1
• /
• pp.41-46
• /
• 2003

The suitability of the life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to analyze the environmental impact of rice cultivation with different fertilizing systems is investigated. The arst part of an LCA is an inventory of parameters used and emissions released due to the system under investigation. In the following step, the Life Cycle Impact Assessment the inventory data were analyzed and aggregated in order to finally get one index representing the total environmental burden. For the life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) the Eco-indicator 95 method has been chosen because this is well documented and regularly applied impact assessment method. The resulting index is called Eco-indicator value. The higher the Eco-indicator value the stronger is the total environmental impact of an analyzed fertilizing system. The rice field experiment conducted in middle parts of korea was chosen as an example for the life cycle impact analysis. In this experiment the treatments were consisted of none fertilizer plot (NF), standard fertilizer plot (SF) applied chemical fertilizers based on soil chemical analysis before rice transplanting, and efflux fertilized plot (EF) applied with pig wastes fermented as the same rates of SF plot as basis on total nitrogen content. The obtained Eco-indicator values were clearly different among the treatments in the rice trial. The total Eco-indicator values for SF and EF have been observed 58 and 38% relative to the NF, respectively. For all the treatments the environmental effects of eutrophication contributed most to the total Eco-indicator value. The results appeared that the LCA methodology is basically suitable to assess the environmental impact associated with different fertilizer applications for rice cultivation. A comparative analysis of the fertilizing system's contribution to global warming and eutrophication is possible.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
• /
• 2009.05a
• /
• pp.1634-1642
• /
• 2009

본 연구는 자체재질로 복합재 적용한 경우를 기존의 금속구조 차체와 25년 운행기간을 기준으로 환경영향을 비교평가하였다. 본 연구는 알루미늄, 스틸, 하이브리드 복합재, 전체 복합재 인 종 4종의 자체를 고려하였다 네가지 차체 시나리오에 대해 원자재 생산, 차체 제작, 25년 사용 단계, 폐기까지의 환경영향에 대해 LCA 기법을 사용하여 평가하였다. 모든 시나리오 경우, 사용단계가 환경영향 카테고리를 좌우했다. 전제 복합재 시나리오가 매립 또는 소각에 대한 가장 낮은 영향을 주었다. 복합재 차체는 금속자제와 비교해 환경영향 측면에서 30$\sim$50 % 개선효과를 보였다.

• Journal of the Korean housing association
• /
• v.14 no.5
• /
• pp.65-74
• /
• 2003

Recently, the environmental conservation has been emphasized over the world. Building industry should carefully reflected the development focused on the economic aspect as well as the environmental considerations. Therefore, it requires the technology development to mitigate the environmental pollution through the reducement of the energy and resources usage amount over the building life cycle. For these, it should be required to set up the analysis methodology to grasp the amount of the environmental pollution and energy and resources in each step of building life cycle. In this paper, it aimed at preparing the analysis process and analyzing the embodied energy and $CO_2$ and $SO_x$ emission according to the building work, field work, mechanical and electrical work on the new building and remodelling, utilizing the inventory analysis which is one of the LCA process.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
• /
• v.20 no.7
• /
• pp.1-7
• /
• 2019

To overcome the limitations of existing rainwater drainage systems, we compared and analyzed a newly developed eco-friendly channel-type rainwater drainage system. We also developed an integrated evaluation index to quantify the improvement of the new system. The concept of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was applied to calculate and compare the costs of each process and to develop the integrated evaluation index, which considers the carbon emissions by each process. As a result, the cost was reduced by 53% overall compared to an O-type system and by 63% compared to a U-type system. In addition, when applying the integrated evaluation index, the new system was evaluated to be over 80% in the four processes compared to the existing systems. When applying the evaluation index to sites in Anyang and Incheon, the new system was improved by 35-100% compared to existing systems.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
• /
• v.45 no.6
• /
• pp.1143-1152
• /
• 2012

We established a top-down methodology to estimate carbon footprint as national mean value (reference) with the statistical data on agri-livestock incomes in 2007. We also established LCI (life cycle inventory) DB by a bottom-up methodology with the data obtained from interview with farmers from 4 large-scale farms at Gunsan, Jeollabuk-do province to estimate carbon footprint in 2011. This study was carried out to compare top-down methodology and bottom-up methodology in performing LCA (life cycle assessment) to analyze the difference in GHGs (greenhouse gases) emission and carbon footprint under conventional rice cultivation system. Results of LCI analysis showed that most of $CO_2$ was emitted during fertilizer production and rice cultivation, whereas $CH_4$ and $N_2O$ were mostly emitted during rice cultivation. The carbon footprints on conventional rice production system were 2.39E+00 kg $CO_2$-eq. $kg^{-1}$ by top-down methodology, whereas 1.04E+00 kg $CO_2$-eq. $kg^{-1}$ by bottom-up methodology. The amount of agro-materials input during the entire rice cultivation for the two methodologies was similar. The amount of agro-materials input for the bottom-up methodology was sometimes greater than that for top-down methodology. While carbon footprint by the bottom-up methodology was smaller than that by the top-down methodology due to higher yield per cropping season by the bottom-up methodology. Under the conventional rice production system, fertilizer production showed the highest contribution to the environmental impacts on most categories except GWP (global warming potential) category. Rice cultivation was the highest contribution to the environmental impacts on GWP category under the conventional rice production system. The main factors of carbon footprints under the conventional rice production system were $CH_4$ emission from rice paddy field, the amount of fertilizer input and rice yield. Results of this study will be used for establishing baseline data for estimating carbon footprint from 'low carbon certification pilot project' as well as for developing farming methods of reducing $CO_2$ emission from rice paddy fields.

• KOREAN JOURNAL OF PACKAGING SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
• /
• v.25 no.1
• /
• pp.1-10
• /
• 2019

Environmental evaluation of two different oxygen high barrier films were performed using life cycle assessment. One of the films (traditional film) was composed of aluminum oxide coated PET film, ink, LDPE and LLDPE. Another film (new film) was consists of PET, ink, protein based coating material, LDPE, LLDPE. Main layer to achieve the high oxygen barrier for traditional film was aluminum oxide coated PET film, whereas the protein based coating material act as oxygen barrier layer for new film. Functional unit of this study was 1000 pouches made of traditional and new film. System boundary was factory to gate. The results of this study revealed that the new film shows better environmental performance for most of impact indicator than traditional film, except marine eutrophication and fine particulate matter formation due to extra coating process in new film system.