Search results for "LIFE CYCLE"
showing 10 items of 378 documents
A Comparison of Solar and Conventional Pavements Via Life Cycle Assessment
2023
The sustainable and green development of roads is lately receiving significant attention. As a multi-functional road capable of both accommodating traffic loads and generating clean energy, solar pavements exhibit a strategic opportunity for the future path of development in the road engineering. Although solar pavements have significant environmental benefits during their operation, they can lead to increased carbon emissions during the process of material preparation, construction, maintenance, etc. Therefore, it is essential to implement the framework of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to investigate their potential environmental impacts and/or benefits. Hence, this paper systematically anal…
Life Cycle Assessment of organic apple supply chain in the North of Italy.
2015
The goal of the study is the assessment of the energy and environmental impacts of 1 ton of organic apples cultivated in the North of Italy, by applying the Life Cycle Assessment methodology. The authors examined the supply chain of apples, by including the supply of raw materials and energy sources, and the farming step. In addition, an assessment of apple distribution to the final users was made. The results show that a relevant share of the total impacts is caused by the transport to the final users, assuming that the product is distributed on local, national and international markets. A detailed analysis of the farming step shows that a significant share in the overall energy and enviro…
Energy and environmental assessment of residual bio-wastes management strategies
2021
Abstract This paper assesses the potential energy and environmental impacts of an anaerobic digester coupled with a combined heat and power plant powered with bio-wastes from the agri-food sector. The analysis is carried out through the Life Cycle Assessment methodology following a “cradle-to-grave” approach and is based mostly on primary data. The anaerobic digester - combined heat and power plant is analysed considering a twofold perspective: one more energy – oriented where the main function of the system is to generate renewable electricity and a waste – oriented one in which the main function is treating bio-wastes. In addition, the environmental indirect effects related to potential c…
An optimised multi-host trematode life cycle: fishery discards enhance trophic parasite transmission to scavenging birds
2016
Overlapping distributions of hosts and parasites are critical for successful completion of multi-host parasite life cycles and even small environmental changes can impact on the parasite's presence in a host or habitat. The generalist Cardiocephaloides longicollis was used as a model for multi-host trematode life cycles in marine habitats. This parasite was studied to quantify parasite dispersion and transmission dynamics, effects of biological changes and anthropogenic impacts on life cycle completion. We compiled the largest host dataset to date, by analysing 3351 molluscs (24 species), 2108 fish (25 species) and 154 birds (17 species) and analysed the resultant data based on a number of …
Combining Membrane and Zero Brine Technologies in Waste Acid Treatment for a Circular Economy in the Hot-Dip Galvanizing Industry: A Life Cycle Persp…
2023
AbstractAn innovative approach of combining membrane and zero brine technologies for a joint treatment of industrial liquid waste is investigated regarding its environmental impacts compared to the existing liquid waste treatment. The object of investigation is the generation of waste acid solution by a hot dip galvanizing plant in Sicily, Italy. The waste acid solution contains hydrochloric acid, iron and zinc, which makes it a hazardous waste according to EU classifications. Environmental impacts are studied for two scenarios in the Tecnozinco hot-dip galvanizing plant in Sicily, Italy: (i) the current process of pickling with linear disposal of waste acid and (ii) the pickling combined w…
Environmental management of granite slab production from an industrial ecology standpoint
2014
The granite production chain is high energy and water intensive with low resource efficiency. This paper focus on characterizing the potential for environmental improvement of the granite production chain by promoting the optimization of sawing technology, the implementation of rainwater harvesting (RWH) and the material recovery of wasted granite (sludge). The environmental performance of multi-blade gangsaw (MBGS) and diamond multi-wire saw (DMWS) technologies is compared by mean of life cycle assessment. Results demonstrate that DMWS technology contribute 30% of water savings, 40% of energy savings and 80% of material savings per square meter of polished granite tiles (60 x 40 x 2 cm) pr…
Energy and environmental analysis of marble productive sites: «by phases» and «by single process» combined approach
2018
Energy Procedia 00 (20 1 8 ) 000 – 000 73rd Conference of the Italian Thermal Machines Engineering Association, ATI 2018, Pisa, Italy, 12 Sep 2018 - 14 Sep 2018; Italy : Elsevier Ltd. (2018).
Use of drones as complement to safety tests on the structures. Study on the chimney stacks of the brownfields
2017
Our cities are rich in historical testimonies of a productive past, many industrial areas that years ago have been a source of income and work are now totally abandoned. Chimneys stacks are an interesting constructive historical episode, because of their representativeness and their materic characteristics. Their size and location, often inside the city centers, sometimes makes them potentially dangerous to safety, so it is necessary to study their conservation status and their resistance to time and stress. The difficulty of finding designs and reliefs and their height and position often make the approach to knowledge difficult, so putting together traditional methods of study with tools u…
Towards a Unified Functional Trait Framework for Parasites
2019
Trait-based research holds high potential to unveil ecological and evolutionary processes. Functional traits are fitness-related characteristics of individuals, which are measured at individual level and defined without using information external to the individual. Despite the usefulness of the functional approach to understand the performance of individuals in ecosystems, and parasitism being the most common life-history strategy on Earth, studies based on functional traits of parasites are still scarce. Since the choice of functional traits is a critical step for any study, we propose a core list of seven functional traits of metazoan parasites, related to three universal challenges faced…
LCA of a solar heating and cooling system equipped with a small water–ammonia absorption chiller
2012
The development of renewable energy technologies is a critical tool for reducing climate change and the reliance on fossil fuels. However, renewable energy technologies cannot be considered totally clean because they require energy consumption and have environmental impacts that cannot be neglected during their life cycle. In this paper, the life cycle assessment methodology was applied to assess resource use and other environmental burdens related to the entire life-cycle steps of a solar cooling plant. The investigated system works with an absorption chiller assisted by a solar plant. Two back-up configurations (hot back-up and cold back-up) were examined in two localities: Palermo (south…