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The paper aims to analyse and compare the environmental performances of the most widely used cooking appliances (the induction hob vs. the gas hob) considering a typical Italian scenario in terms of food, family and social habits. Cooking appliances are subject to energy labelling, and they represent the most impacting system inside households. This study was performed in accordance with the international standard, ISO 14040/14044, by using an attributional Life Cycle Assessment (aLCA). The functional unit is defined as the “preparation of a complete homemade meal (lunch) for 20 years consumed by a four-member family in Italy”. This study shows the dominance, in terms of environmental impact, of the induction hob with respect to the gas hob for most of the selected midpoint indicators. In particular, the induction hob accounts for more than 60% of the climate change and ozone depletion impact categories and more than 70% of the metal depletion category. The same trend is also noticed in the end-point categories (human health, ecosystem qualities and resources) and for the Cumulative Energy Demand indicator. Based on the experimental evidence of this work, the use phase is the most important due to the different energy carriers (natural gas vs. electrical energy). This finding is the result of the nature of the energy carrier (the electricity grid mix) in the Italian scenario, which is mainly based on non-renewable sources. In addition, concerning the production phase of the two appliances, the induction hob shows a relevant dominance in terms of the human toxicity and metal depletion impact categories due to the use of rare metals and coppers in the cooktop part manufacturing. The outcomes obtained from this study may be used by household manufacturers to improve the performance and design solutions of their appliances as well as by end users in their selection of cooking technologies.

The constantly growing worldwide population is leading to a constant increment of waste production. In most developing and developed countries an ongoing key challenge is to collect, recycle, treat and dispose consistent quantities of solid waste. In this context, Waste-to-Energy (WtE) plants play a crucial role as they convert waste into energy. Among the different technical issues, temperature fluctuations of the flue gas and high temperature corrosion represent two of the main limitations to the plant efficiency. A possible solution consists of using a refractory brick containing a Phase Change Material (PCM) to enable the installation of additional superheaters in the combustion chamber in order to increase the temperature of the superheated steam without provoking corrosion, which allows the overall electrical efficiency to be increased. This study assesses the environmental impact originated by the employment of the aforementioned technology by means of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). In particular, an LCA comparison study between a “standard” WtE plant configuration and a PCM-equipped plant is carried out. The comparison aims to highlight the environmental burdens generated by the employment of an additional quantity of refractory material, as well as the adoption of PCM and the modifications applied at system level (e.g. heat exchanger surfaces). On the contrary, such negative contribution should be mitigated by the increment in the electric efficiency of the plant which, given a definite amount of solid waste input to handle would return a higher amount of electric energy as output.

Electronics plays an essential role in many products and this leads to a larger production of e-wastes, currently recovered through impactful recycling processes. This paper proposes a web-based platform to implement reuse scenarios for electronic components. The objective is to create a structured portal where all the stakeholders can collaborate to extend the components lifespan and implement new circular business models. The final goal is to “close the gap” between the beginning and the end of life. The case study (industrial application) shows relevant benefits for the involved electronics manufacturer both in terms of environmental impact and economic savings.

End-of-life (EoL) modelling in life cycle assessment has already been broadly discussed within several studies. However, no consensus has been achieved on how to model recycling in LCA, even though several approaches have been developed. Within this paper, results arising from the application of two new EoL formulas, the product environmental footprint (PEF) and the multi-recycling-approach (MRA) ones, are compared and discussed. Both formulas consider multiple EoL scenarios such as recycling, incineration and landfill. The PEF formula has been developed within the PEF programme whose intent is to define a harmonized methodology to evaluate the environmental performance of products. The formula is based on a 50:50 allocation approach, as burdens and benefits associated with recycling are accounted for a 50% rate. The MRA formula has been developed to change focus from products to materials. Recycling cycles and material losses over time are considered with reference to material pools. Allocation between systems is no longer needed, as the actual number of potential life cycles for a certain material is included in the calculation. Both the approaches have been tested within two case studies. Methodological differences could thereof be determined, as well as applicability concerns, due to the type of data required for each formula. As far as the environmental performance is concerned, impacts delivered by MRA are lower than those delivered by PEF for aluminium, while the opposite happens for plastic and rubber due to the higher share of energy recovery accounted in PEF formula. Stainless steel impacts are almost the same. The application of the two formulas provides some inputs for the EoL dilemma in LCA. The use of a wider perspective, better reflecting material properties all over the material life cycle, is of substantial importance to properly represent recycling situations. In MRA, such properties are treated and less data are required compared to the PEF formula. On the contrary, the PEF model better accommodates the modelling of products whose materials, at end of life, can undertake the route of recycling or recovery (or landfill), depending on country-specific EoL management practices. However, its application requires more data.

A growing interest toward the adoption of a lifecycle perspective in product design is characterizing current industrial trends. The cooperation of global manufacturing actors is fundamental to retrieve information from each lifecycle stage. From this background, a lifecycle based platform is proposed to efficiently set up feasible design configurations by including global manufacturing information. Starting from a set of input parameters, the idea is to collect lifecycle information in a customized XML structure in order to draw up the environmental profile. Such platform can also be adopted as an organized “knowledge repository” enhancing information sharing among the global manufacturing network.

Thermoelectric generator is a solid-state energy converter which can convert waste heat directly into electricity. During the past decades, thermoelectric materials have been widely investigated whereas the integrated design of thermoelectric generators have been less studied. This paper proposes and implements a framework for the design of thermoelectric generators, consisting of thermoelectric modules and heat exchangers, based on the Taguchi method. As compared with previous researches which optimize the thermoelectric module alone and assume fixed temperature or fixed heat fluxes for the thermoelectric modules, this work proposes a methodology to optimize the thermoelectric module and the heat exchanger together. Five design parameters (namely the height, the fill-ratio, the ratio of cross-sectional area of n-type material over p-type material of thermoelectric module, the length and the material of the heat exchanger) were analyzed for two different applications, waste heat recovery from marine and automotive engines. In order to perform the analysis, a L27 (35) orthogonal array was employed to assess all of the design parameters returning the maximum output power. By analysis of variance, it is found that the thermoelectric module height is the most important design parameter contributing for the 69.6% and 30.25% in automotive and marine application, respectively. And the optimal design parameter set are also determined in both applications.

A growing interest toward sustainability actions at every level is characterizing the industrial sector. Following the environmental trend, further developments and improvements regarding the sustainability assessment of manufacturing processes is needed. With a particular focus on machining processes, the optimization of working parameters can represent a valid step forward in sustainable manufacturing. This paper aims to provide companies with the needed tool to independently asses the environmental performance of their customized machining operations. The purpose of the presented work is then to demonstrate that energy consumption calculated with empirical mathematical models available in literature, gives the greatest contribution to the environmental impact for a selection of machining processes by means of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Such objective lead to a clear need of specific models for the calculation of environmental impact of machining processes instead of available LCA datasets. Available mathematical models are adopted to provide a realistic energy consumption profile by using processing time variables. Such values are calculated through 3D models whose are used to recognize the needed manufacturing operations together with relative processing times. In order to validate the previous assumption, a couple of machining processes have been selected as reference and analyzed by setting up a detailed Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) model. Results shown that among the different inputs and outputs, the energy consumption carries the highest impact. Over 90% of the total impact for the chosen impact categories (Global Warming Potential and Eco-Costs) is attributable to the energy consumption meaning that, for the sake of simplification, the environmental profile of such operations is overlapped by its energy consumption.

Having environmental indications such as those provided by Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), while designing a product would reduce the time required by the trial-and-error approach resulting from environmental checks only at the end of the process, directing the development towards more sustainable solutions from the beginning. To achieve this, the design and environmental analysis should be more integrated, as well as the respective tools. The project idea discussed in this paper aims to overcome this barrier by defining an XML (eXtensible Markup Language) structure designed to carry Life Cycle Inventory data from Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools to Life Cycle Assessment tool. The idea is to exploit overlapping data between the CAD system and LCA instruments, which are currently not being considered. This process will contribute to the reduction of time required for data input and the amount of mistakes. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016.

Part 10: Sustainability and Systems Improvement; International audience; To preserve proper growth of the planet, industries have to increase sustainability of produced good according to the compliance and governance regulations for NPD (new product development). Sustainability concerns economical, environmental and social aspects; among these issues, the last theme is the less argued in literature and this paper focuses on the social life cycle assessment of products. One of the crucial aspects of S-LCA, is the definition of impact categories and involved stakeholders. This work, proposes a new S-LCA methodology, according to UNEP/SETAC framework. After the clarification of stakeholders, categories and general notions already known on S-LCA, a test case is shown where the new approach is implemented. In this use case, stakeholders from an Italian product line are analysed, then categories of attribution of social impacts are outlined. The paper offers a step-by-step procedure useful to verify the S-LCA theories currently available on a practical industrial case, defining also weaknesses that might be addressed in future studies.

The promotion of efficient use of resources is at the core of the Europe 2020 Strategy and its flagship initiative on “A Resource Efficient Europe”. Ambitious goals are defined, whose achievement requires actions across different sectors. Mechatronic products play an important role in this framework for three main reasons: (i) the high energy and resource consumption they generate; (ii) the volume of products traded on the international market, since mechatronics cover products ranging from small and large household appliances, to cars, planes, robots and manufacturing machines; (iii) they are replaced before becoming obsolete, making the end of life management challenging. The Ecodesign Directive is supporting the improvement of the environmental performance of this product group by providing measures to intervene in the design process, the phase that determines 80% of the whole environmental impact generated by a product or service. However, designers often struggle with the inclusion of environmental considerations into the design process and further supporting measures are necessary. To address this challenge, the G.EN.ESI research project was launched in 2012, aimed at developing a software engineering platform of different tools that support designers’ choices from an environmental point of view. The main goals of the platform are: to exploit the interoperability of the design tools traditionally used in the product development with the environmental assessment ones; to allow for a rapid environmental assessment of design choices, by adopting simplified Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tools. As far as simplified LCA is concerned, different simplification techniques have been developed and are available in the scientific literature, but a general agreement on which strategy is more robust has not yet been found. However, many agree that the availability of detailed LCA studies for specific applications is important to define simplifying methods for those applications, together with the exchange and availability of relevant data along the supply chain. Building upon these two concepts, this paper presents the approach developed for simplifying LCA within the GENESI platform, with an application to the product “cooker hood”. The repeatability of the strategy to other product groups is also discussed, together with the next development steps.

The present work investigates the economic feasibility of ecological vehicles. The comparison has been developed between traditional vehicles, gasoline and diesel fueled, and green vehicles powered by electric, hybrid or natural gas motors. Nowadays, the vehicle life cycle cost is an important decision criterion used by consumer to buy a car, due to fuel price increasing. Life cycle cost includes purchase cost, operation cost, but also social cost lead to environmental impact regarding production, use and end-of-life phases. The proposed research focuses life cycle cost from consumer side in order to evaluate the economic feasibility, using ecological solutions for transportation in EU. Different use scenarios are proposed, considering different vehicle sizes and mileages, without considering taxes and any governance incentives. © 2014 IEEE.

Nowadays, electric vehicles fill a relevant car market share. The Li-Ion batteries currently represent the best solution in term of environmental impact and performance. Thermal management for Li-Ion batteries is a very interesting topic, since high temperatures accelerate degradation rate of a cell and compromise its safety level. The battery thermal modeling can be quite challenging. The proposed approach describes a methodology to simulate different thermal management algorithms in order to obtain an uniform temperature distribution in a Li-Ion battery pack. A test case has been developed where the application of an thermal algorithm has been analyzed through CFD simulations.

A niche of the electric vehicle market is the electric retrofit of existing vehicles. These updates replace internal combustion engines with high efficiency electric motors and high capacity Li-ion batteries. This market is dominated by mostly small and medium size enterprises that provide tailored solutions to customers. These companies seek to reduce their costs and lead times by using virtual prototyping tools and methods in the main design processes. In this context, our work defines a design methodology to support designers in the definition of cooling systems. As a test case, we analyzed the electric retrofit of a small electric car with a lead-acid battery that was updated to Li-ion technology. We focused on a simulation of the cooling of the battery using a thermal analysis based on the physical parameters of the cell and test bench results. The issue is the evaluation of the heat generated by the electrochemical reactions of lithium ion battery cells. A representative battery module was simulated following the methodological approach. The virtual prototyping analysis was divided into two levels: the thermal simulation of a single cell, and the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis of a battery module composed of LiFePO4 prismatic cells. The geometric and fluid dynamic parameters were investigated with a CFD solver to study the cooling performance. A cooling system configuration was proposed and analyzed using the virtual prototyping tools. © 2013 IEEE.

The adoption of an eco-design approach is a key challenge for the total quality environmental management (TQEM). Recently, several eco-design methodologies have been presented, but none can be easily integrated in the traditional design process of manufacturing companies. The research presented in this paper aims to define a methodology, called G.EN.ESI, to help designers (especially those ones without a specific know-how on eco-design), during the development of sustainable products. In order to aid designers in the assessment of the environmental and cost impacts of a product, also a set of software tools have been defined. Using such a platform, the designer is supported by a robust workbench to perform all the analyses required to evaluate the product eco-sustainability for each phase of the product lifecycle. This software platform is essential for companies which want to implement the G.EN.ESI methodology without upsetting their own consolidated modus operandi and the internal organisation.

This paper discusses end-of-life (EoL) modeling issues in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), through the application to a domestic cooker hood. Two EoL approaches are applied and discussed, namely the avoided burden and the one recommended by the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) Guide, presently under testing. While no case studies on PEF application have been published yet, to the best of our knowledge, the scientific community is questioning the robustness and relevance of some methodological aspects, especially the EoL formula. The objective of the work is to provide a case study for supporting the scientific discussion on EoL modeling by: applying the avoided burden approach to the cooker hood EoL; testing the PEF EoL approach on a cooker hood component, the aluminum filter, and compare the results with those obtained from the avoided burden approach; evaluating how both the approaches affect the allocation of burdens/credits associated to recycling. The Global Warming Potential (GWP) and the Abiotic Depletion Potential (ADP) impact categories are investigated. The study points out that the PEF EoL approach delivers higher environmental impacts than the avoided burden one, due to a reduced contribution from the avoided impacts. Overall, the application of the PEF EoL approach is more complex, due to the additional and often not available information needed, such as the recycled content of the materials and the disposal treatments that are avoided when recycled materials are used in the product. Also the structure of the LCA datasets may limit the application of the PEF EoL.