Manufacturing and Recycling Impact on Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of Innovative Wind Power Plant Part 1/2

Abstract

Wind power plants are considered as an ecologically-clean source of energy. However, manufacturing processes cannot be treated that way. Manufacturing processes consume huge amounts of electrical and thermal energy and significant amount of materials, e.g., steel, polymers, oils, and lubricants. All of the above could be potentially harmful for environment. There are not many works and publications regarding life-cycle analysis of wind power plants. This study’s objective is to use LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) to the manufacturing and utilization of a specific drag force-driven wind turbine. The discussed innovative wind turbine is of the type that assures safety for prosumer application. Drag force-driven turbines become more heavy than other types of lift driven turbines, but at the same time, their characteristic provides opportunity to use easily recyclable materials instead of materials like plastics or composites. The wider look through LCA tools, may change the perspective of view at that type of wind turbines. Analyzed turbine has capacity of 15 kW and is located in Poland. LCA was carried out using Eco-indicator 99 method in eleven impact categories. Among all of the turbine components, the highest negative impact was noted in the case of the tower. The wind turbine under consideration is characterized by high recycling potential. According to the presented research, recycling provides around 30% reduction of the environmental impact.

Using the LCA Method to Develop the Production of Pigment for Processing Plastics

“…To facilitate and refine the data collection, special inventory tables were created. Data collection allows for the precise determination of the source of origin; here the geographical scope for the production technology was located in central Poland [ 11 ]. The data comes from a production plant, which has operated in the country since 2021.…”

Ecological Analysis of Selected Stages of the Food Packaging Production Process

“…inorganics, climate change, radiation and ozone layer. The ecosystem quality unit is PAF (Potentially Affrcted Fraction) or PDF (Potentially Dissapeared Fraction) (Doerffer K., et al, 2021). The three impact categories assessed in this area (ecotoxicity, acidification/eutrophication, land use) selected representative species groups.…”

Experimental Investigation on the Effect of Dry Ice Compression on the Poisson Ratio

“…As a result, it is characterized by a number of advantages, including improved resource efficiency concerning both production and manufacturing processes [9]. However, it should be noted that despite efforts to manage waste generated throughout the product life cycle, the current level of techniques does not allow zero waste production, as illustrated by the example of a wind turbine in [10]. Despite generating relatively clean and emission-free electricity, building a wind power plant consumes a significant amount of energy and materials, which in turn generate waste during the manufacturing process.…”