Exergy Life Cycle Assessment of soil erosion remediation technologies: an Italian case study

Rocco, Matteo Vincenzo; Cassetti, Gabriele; Gardumi, Francesco; Colombo, Emanuela

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.10.055

Cited by 19 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…More recent applications of exergy based methods include its use in LCA to assess alternative soil remediation technologies (Rocco et al, 2015), attempts to include economic and environmental factors in ECEC of industrial processes (Yang et al, 2015) and the extension of the classical Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) model to include sustainability factors such as labour, capital and environment based on EEA approach (Jawad et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a coherent multi-level framework for resource accounting

Hang

Martínez-Hernández

Leach

et al. 2016

Journal of Cleaner Production

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With increasing resource scarcity and environmental impacts resulting from inefficient resource utilisation, accounting for resource consumption along the life cycle of a product or service becomes critical for designing production-consumption systems. This work aims at developing a coherent framework for resource accounting to support the evaluation of alternatives for production and consumption activities. The framework provides an understanding of resource utilisation at unit, process, inter-process and productionconsumption levels within a system. The multilevel characteristic of this framework allows a comprehensive and holistic view of a system with the potential to reveal how decisions at one level would affect other levels of the system. Based on such a multilevel view, a unique 1 adaptation of the Cumulative Exergy Resource Accounting method is proposed to quantify resource consumption associated with both technological and natural processes. This work also differentiates between and accounts for the operational resource consumption in resource extraction, agriculture and manufacturing and for the capital resource consumption for providing machinery and infrastructure. This is a practical framework for resource accounting that can be used by process engineers and local planners to support decision making regarding alternative system designs, gain insights on the performance of a production system and devise design options including retrofits for improving the overall resource efficiency of a system. By unfolding the resource consumption through each system layer, the framework provides a robust and transparent way to capture effects of decision making during design or retrofitting of processes in order to find the most efficient design options. In addition, the framework can also be applied to support research in other areas such as social, cultural and business. Finally, a case study on the production and consumption of sugarcane ethanol is used to illustrate the features of the proposed framework. The framework proved useful in assessing the effects on resource consumption for design decisions at the various levels, such as choosing between molecular sieve and azeotropic distillation at the unit level, adoption of water intra-recycling at the process level, and bagasse exchange flows at inter-process level. The proposed systematic approach has given powerful insights into how changes in resource consumption occur at different levels.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a coherent multi-level framework for resource accounting

Hang

Martínez-Hernández

Leach

et al. 2016

Journal of Cleaner Production

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…The functional unit for this study was the erosion materials required to cover one hectare of slope. The system boundaries for this study included the production and transportation of raw materials, installation, and hydro-seeding required to install erosion control (Rocco et al 2015).…”

Section: Lca Applications In Construction and Materials Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Aggregate studies receive primary data from supplier surveys and tend to report their data in tables that highlight gasoline and diesel consumption (Gan et al 2016;Gayarre et al 2015). In Rocco et al (2015), data was presented on each of the four-erosion control method usage patterns from industry sources, while secondary data was gathered from European Union published datasets.…”

Section: Lca Applications In Construction and Materials Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…During the LCIA phase, the global warming potential (kg CO 2 eq.) was quantified in every construction and materials production study examined in this review (Stripple, 2001; Barandica et al, 2013;López Gayarre et al, 2015;Rocco et al, 2015;Gan et al, 2016a). Other commonly examined impact categories were acidification and eutrophication.…”

Section: Lca Applications In Construction and Materials Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For secondary data, this study used published data sets from Ecoinvent. Ecoinvent was the most commonly used secondary data set in the studied reviewed here (González-García et al, 2013a, 2014aMcGrath et al, 2015;Rocco et al, 2015;Gan et al, 2016).…”

Section: Applying Iso Framework To River Restorationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Quantifying the Environmental Performance of a Stream Habitat Improvement Project

Morse¹

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River restoration projects are being installed worldwide to rehabilitate degraded river habitat. Many of these projects focus on stream habitat improvement (SHI), and an estimated 60%of the 37,000 projects listed in the National River Restoration Science Synthesis Program focus on SHI for salmon and trout species. These projects frequently lack a sufficient monitoring program or account for the environmental costs associated with SHI. The present study used life cycle assessment (LCA) techniques and topographic effectiveness monitoring to quantify environmental costs on the basis of geomorphic change. This methodology was a novel approach to assessing the cost-benefit relationship of SHI. To test this methodology, two phases of the Lower Scotts Creek Floodplain and Habitat Enhancement Project (LSCR) were used as a case study. The LSCR was a SHI project installed along the northern coast of Santa Cruz County, California, USA. A limited scope LCA was used to quantify the life cycle impacts of raw material production, materials transportation, and on-site construction. Once these baseline results were produced, a topographic monitoring program was used to quantify the topographic diversity index (TDI) in pre-and post-project conditions. The TDI percent change was used to scale the baseline LCA results, which quantified the environmental impacts based on geomorphic change. Phase II outperformed phase I. Phase I had greater cumulative environmental impacts and experienced a 7.7 % TDI increase from pre-to post-project conditions. Phase II had 43% less cumulative environmental impacts and experienced a 7.9% TDI increase from pre-to post-project conditions. The impacts in phase I were greater because of the amount of material excavated to create off-channel features, which were a key feature of the LSCR. A scenario analysis also was conducted within the LCA component of this study. The scenario analysis suggests that life cycle impacts could be reduced by 30%-65% by using the accelerated recruitment method in place of importing materials to build large wood complexes. The results of this study suggest that managers may improve the environmental performance of SHI projects by: (1) using the accelerated recruitment method to introduce larger key pieces to the channel, reducing the need to import materials; (2) using nursery grown plants as opposed to excavating plants for revegetation; (3) minimizing fuel combustion in heavy equipment and haul trucks by ensuring clear access to the channel and streambank, using small engine equipment to clear access corridors during site preparation, running more fuel-efficient machinery or bio-fuel powered machinery, and by attempting to minimize haul distances by sourcing materials locally; and (4) utilizing a "franken-log" design (a ballasted LWC configuration with a rootwad fastened to the downstream end of a log) in LWCs which led to favorable TDI change. This study concluded that LCA could be a valuable tool for monitoring SHI and river restoration projects and that further research ...

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