Life Cycle Assessment, also known as \"Cradle-to-grave Analysis\" is a technique
ID: 105588 • Letter: L
Question
Life Cycle Assessment, also known as "Cradle-to-grave Analysis" is a technique used in pollution prevention. It accounts for all inputs and outputs in the various steps of a product's life, from raw material extraction to final disposal. For a given product, this technique can be used to identify the types and magnitudes of environmental impacts that the product has, including making and using it. Using this concept, provide a detailed discussion to show how the environment is impacted by "The Automobile".Explanation / Answer
Life Cycle Assessment of an Automobile
A life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool that can be used to evaluate the potential environmental impacts of a product, material, process, or activity. An LCA is a comprehensive method for assessing a range of environmental impacts across the full life cycle of a product system, from materials acquisition to manufacturing, use, and final disposition.
Our global society is dependent on road transport.With the advance of science better, quicker means of transport have been made to travel on road, water and air. The environmental impacts of an automobile to be considered on a life cycle basis which includes impacts associated from the material stage till it goes to scrap, which includes material making, vehicle manufacture, fuel production process, automobile operation, old vehicle disposal and separation of components (including battery) or recycling.
Vehicle design and development
It is the most important stage since it determines the materials composition of the vehicle, fuel economy, safety, and emissions, essentially the “life cycle performance” throughout the vehicle lifetime. Material extraction/sources consider the materials that make up the automobile and that they must be extracted and processed.Significant environmental impacts are produced during the vehicle cycle – the production, recycling and disposal of materials used for vehicle manufacture.
The extraction of raw materials for vehicle manufacture and the disposal of end-of-life vehicles can lead to certain amount emissions in the atmosphere, and also have significant impacts on land use and ecosystem. The materials used for the automobile mnufacturing include iron and steel, non-ferrous metals (particularly aluminium), plastics, composites, glass, rubber and fluids. The disposal of these contribute to the production of solid wastes that are either recycled, incinerated or land-filled, each option leading to a complex set of environmental issues.
Fuel Production
Petrol and Diesel are the most used fuels in teh automobiles. Historically, petrol has been favoured over diesel for passenger cars, and diesel the fuel of preference for commercial vehicles, though the popularity of diesel cars has increased markedly over the last decade, due to cheaper fuel, diesel cars’ higher fuel economy (compared to petrol), perceived lower maintenance costs and an improved product range. Petrol and diesel are mixtures of liquid hydrocarbons refined from crude petroleum. The production of these fuels involves extraction, separation of crude oil from other fluids, transport to refineries, processing, transport to regional storage locations and distribution to retail or fleet refuelling stations. Each fuel must be carefully blended, either to control petrol's volatility and anti-knock performance and ignition quality.
Every stage of the fuel manufacturing have certain amount of impact on the environment. The process of extraction and refining produce large amount of waste and filterates to the environment. Though maximum amount of the waste are utilized for various industrial purposes, still some amount of waste is unused and disposed. Transportation is very critical as the fuels are volatile and easily flamable. Also there are problems like oil spill and fuel leakage in the water bodies and cultivation lands during the transportation.
Vehicle operation and emission
Automobiles are responsible for the consumption of significant quantities of energy and raw materials and atmospheric pollution and solid wastes. Vehicle Emissions to the air include greenhouse gases like chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), Carbon Monoxide (CO), Sulphur dioxide and NOX lead to the global warming, ozone depletion, and air-pollutants which can lead to acidification and photochemical ‘smog’. There is a growing body of evidence to link vehicle generated pollutants directly to human ill health including the incidence of respiratory and cardio-pulmonary disease and lung cancer.
The vehicle norms like EURO standards are followed globally in many countries to control the emissions from automobiles. The stardards provides guidelines to design and develop the vehicles with less emission and running on cleaner fuels. Despite the achievement of manufacturers to significantly reduce conventional car emissions through technological improvements, some air quality issues still remain. Of the four regulated car emissions, NOx and PMs are the most difficult to control and are closely associated with poor air quality
End-of-Life
End of Life is the final stage of a vehicle’s life and comprises transportation of the vehicle to a dismantling facility, dismantling, fluids and metals recovery, shredding, and disposal of the residue. Many leading manufacturers like Ford , GM and Audi says that the vehicle and battery lifetimes are assumed to be 150,000 km driven, which is well aligned with typical lifetime assumptions used by the automotive industry. The disposal of the used vehicles and components contribute to the production of solid wastes.
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