Natech risk and the impact of high-GWP content release on LCA of industrial components

Global warming and ozone depletion potentials caused by emissions from HFC and CFC banks due to structural damage

“…(11). The validity of the approach is confirmed by the fact that the difference could be fully explained by the larger refrigerant content used in the commercial and industrial equipment [24].…”

“…To cope with these limitations, this paper presents a study on these little explored mechanisms of emissions together with some simple analytical tools capable of taking into account the ODP effects, which can be implemented in the methods currently used to conduct LCAs on buildings that also integrate NHs. The paper's Section 2 introduces an extension to the ODP of the framework based on the Content Release GHG Emission Potential (CGEP) proposed by [24]. Then, an application to the case study of a residential building is provided in Section 3.…”

“…The original CGEP framework was introduced by [24] to integrate the assessment of the GWP impact of NHs. The framework builds on the empirical evidence that damage-induced release of high-GWP compounds can result in a significant environmental impact.…”

“…In this section, we present the case study of a residential building, generalized from the viewpoint of high-ODP content and considering different degrees of vulnerability linked to several NHs and construction technologies. Unlike the work of [24], which focused on specific industrial components, this choice was made to: i) provide an application as general as possible, ii) prove that, being CFCs out of any production process, even the content of a civil structure can easily result in an ODP possible impact much higher than what assessed with conventional approaches, iii) cope with the paucity of data regarding CFC banks.…”

“…Along this line, the release of harmful chemicals into the environment has been investigated within the analyses of NH-induced technological ("Natech") disasters [23]. Whilst Natech events are known to result in direct contamination due to leakage of polluting substances, the issue of the chemicals' global warming effects have only recently been investigated [24]. Likewise, the problem of the environmental impact of NHs has been explored by several studies on the LCA of buildingsamong others, see [25; 26].…”