Search results for "Life cycle assessment"
showing 10 items of 172 documents
Energy and environmental impacts of home automation components
2014
Life Cycle Assessment is applied to estimate the life cycle energy and environmental impacts of five components used in the home automation systems: an electricity meter, an actuator with an integrated current sensor, a web server audio/video, an interface with infrared emitter, a multimedia touch screen. For each component, the impacts related to “one unit of product” (selected as functional unit) are assessed following a “from cradle to grave” approach, including the manufacturing, operation and end-of-life steps. The results showed that the operation step gives a contribution higher than 54% on primary energy consumption and variable from about 54% to about 99% on environmental impacts, …
Italian experiences in Life Cycle Assessment of olive oil: a survey and critical review
2010
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…
UN APPROCCIO BASATO SULLA MODELLAZIONE 3D E IL LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT PER UNA GESTIONE SOSTENIBILE DELLA MANUTENZIONE STRADALE
2021
Among several goals of the road agencies, one of the most relevant is the maintenance and rehabilitation of the road pavement. The growth of traffic, the longstanding lack of funding and, sometimes, an emergency-based planning of intervention, are common drivers leading to low level of pavement conditions in terms of ride quality and safety. In addition both cost and environmental concerns due to monitoring stage are relevant issues within the management system of local and urban road network, especially. With the purpose of implementing sustainability in the road pavement management, this paper provides an approach based on coupled low- cost 3D image modelling distress identification and L…
Life Cycle Management delle pavimentazioni stradali
2022
Ormai parola chiave della nostra società, la sostenibilità è al centro di ricerche e dibattiti. La comunità scientifica si impegna da anni nella definizione di strumenti e metodologie comuni per riuscire a quantificarla, proponendo standard e linee guida basate sull’analisi del ciclo di vita, come il Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), di prodotti e processi. Nell’ambito dell’ingegneria civile esistono procedure standardizzate a livello internazionale per svolgere esercizi di Sustainability Assessment; queste risultano ben strutturate per gli edifici, meno dettagliate invece per altre opere, come le pavimentazioni stradali. Questo lavoro presenta il risultato principale del progetto “PavementLCM”,…
An Italian input–output model for the assessment of energy and environmental benefits arising from retrofit actions of buildings
2013
Abstract The paper presents an energy and environmental extended input–output model combined with the life cycle assessment, applied to assess the energy and environmental benefits arising from the Italian policy of tax deduction for energy retrofit actions of buildings. The study allowed to assess the advantages due to the above policy, taking into account both direct and indirect energy saving and avoided CO 2 emissions obtained with the retrofit actions and indirect energy consumption and related CO 2 emissions due to the realization of the above actions. Moreover, the authors defined an original model to assess the indirect rebound effect caused by the energy saving actions. The obtaine…
Life Cycle Environmental Assessment of Energy Valorization of the Residual Agro-Food Industry
2021
This study assesses the potential environmental impacts related to the energy valorization of agro-food industry waste thought the Life Cycle Assessment methodology (ISO 14040). The system examined consists of a real anaerobic digester coupled with a combined anaerobic digester and heat and power plant (AD-CHP) operating in Sicily. The analysis accounts for all the impacts occurring from the delivery of the biomass to the AD-CHP plant up to the electricity generation in the CHP. The main outcomes of the study include the eco-profile of the energy system providing electricity and the assessment of the contribution of each life cycle phase aimed at identifying the potential improvement area. …
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…
Energy, water and environmental balance of a complex water supply system
2015
The present paper describes the analysis of water and energy balance in a complex urban water supply system. The analysis was carried out employing Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) methodologies. The LCA approach was integrated with the analysis of the system energy and water balance. For a real size water supply system, based on the results of the individual LCAs, the current baseline was constructed highlighting the water, energy and environmental (in terms of CO2eq emissions in the atmosphere) costs of supplied water. Then, three different mitigation measures have been evaluated: the first is based on energy production by installation of photovoltaic systems; the second is based on energy recov…
Life Cycle Assessment in the Wine Sector
2015
Currently, stakeholders’ increasing attention to quality is driving the wine sector to rethink and change its own production processes. Amongst product quality dimensions, the environment is gaining ever-growing attention at various levels of policy-making and business. Given its soundness, the use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has become widespread in many application contexts. Apart from applications for communication purposes, LCA has also been used in the wine sector to highlight environmental hot spots in supply chains, to compare farming practices and to detect improvement options, inter alia. Case studies whose focus is the wine industry abound in high quality publications. This Cha…