Life Cycle Assessment Of Fuel Injector Production

In this thesis, the lift cycle impact assessment on the MPI fuel injector production of one international corporation, including its China Shanghai plant, Portugal Lisbon plant and US Chicago plant, has been carefully researched. The assessment refers to the abiotic resources depletion, greenhouse effect, acidification, eutrophication, photochemical smog, human toxicity and ecological toxicity,7 types of environmental impacts in total. For the characterized results of life cycle inventory, the results of China Shanghai plant are the largest in all types of environmental impacts, while those of Portugal Lisbon plant are the smallest. The largest differences lie on the EP and ETP, and their times of values between the largest and the smallest are 322.61 and 45.66 respectively. It reflects the fact that the environmental emission of COD and metal pollutants of China Shanghai plant are much higher than those of Portugal Lisbon plant and US Chicago plant. Meanwhile, because the Portugal Lisbon plant and US Chicago plant share the same NREL data in life cycle inventory analysis, it suggests that when the technology levels are similar, the larger the production amount is, the smaller the environmental emissions there will be.For the simplification factors of life cycle impact assessment, if use the global environmental impact potentials in 2000 for normalization, the results of three plants are 4.47E-10a,1.35E-11a and 1.39E-11a respectively, while if use those in 1995, the results of three plants are 1.07E-10a,1.32E-11a and 1.37E-11a.For China Shanghai plant in the whole process of fuel injector production, if use the global environmental impact potentials in 2000 for normalization, the percentage of ETP is the highest, about 63.59%; the next is EP, about 26.10%; the following is GWP, about 4.70%. For single pollutant, the percentage of vanadium is the highest, up to 60.39%; the next ones are COD and nitric oxides, about 25.76% and 3.58%. If use the global environmental impact potentials in 1995 for normalization, the percentage of EP is the highest, about 47.95%; the next is GWP, about 20.07%; the following are ADP and AP, about 14.44% and 11.31% respectively. For single pollutant, the percentage of COD is the highest, up to 46.68%; the next ones are nitric oxides, carbon dioxide and sulfuric dioxide, about 13.12%,9.07% and 7.37%.For Portugal Lisbon plant and US Chicago plant, if use the global environmental impact potentials in 2000 for normalization, then the percentage of ETP is the largest for both, above 45%; the following are the GWP, AP and HTP. If use the global environmental impact potentials in 1995 for normalization, then the percentage of ADP is the largest for both, still above 45%; the following are the GWP, AP and POCP. Because these two plants share the life cycle inventories from US NREL database, and their raw material consumption and environmental emission in production are similar, their life cycle impact assessment results are close. They both have the pattern that the percentage of HTP is the highest; that of EP is very low; the percentage of GWP changes little, while that of ADP is relatively high. It suggests that in the fuel injector production process, their environmental emissions are relatively low, and their life cycle impacts begin to shift to the consumption of natural resources. In the direct fuel injector production process, the direct environmental emissions of three plants are similar. However, when it comes to the final whole life cycle inventories, if use the global environmental impact potentials in 2000 for normalization, the simplification result of China Shanghai plant is more than 33 times of those of Portugal Lisbon plant and US Chicago plant (if use the global environmental impact potentials in 1995 for normalization, it is about 8.1 times). It indicates that although in the corporate, the management and technology levels of China Shanghai plant begin to catch up with those of Portugal Lisbon plant and US Chicago plant, in the aspects of basic energy and material production, including the production process of electricity, diesel, steel, and ABS engineering plastics, the environmental emissions of China are much higher than those of US.For Chinese domestic, the focuses of clean production management for fuel injector production process must lie on the emission reduction of COD, nitric oxides, carbon dioxide, sulfuric dioxide and mental pollutants (especially vanadium). In the meantime, the reduction of resource consumption of coal and oil in electricity production must be emphasized. Generally speaking, the above pollutants are discharged during the exploitation of energy and production of electricity generation. Consequently, the environmental emissions during the whole process of electricity generation have the largest impact on the environmental influence of fuel injector productions.Compared the normalization when using the global environmental impact potentials in 2000 and in 1995, it can be found that former greatly enlarges the impact of ETP, intensifies the impact of EP and HTP at a certain extent, balances the alternation of GWP100 and AP, reduces the impact of POCP, and greatly decreases the impact of ADP. In other word, if use the global environmental impact potentials in 2000 for normalization, it will highlight the environmental impact of ETP, while if use the global environmental impact potentials in 1995 for normalization, it will distinguish that of ADP. For this thesis, both have advantages and disadvantages. They both enlarge the potential environmental impacts of some types and reduce those of other types. In normal conditions, it is suggested considering the combination of both.