assessment of environmental impacts in comfortable furniture production process using life cycle assessment (LCA) technique

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 MSc. student, Department of Wood and Paper Sciences and Technology, Faculty of Natural Resources, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Tehran

2 Assistant Professor, Technology of Wood- based Composites, Department of Wood and Paper Sciences and Technology, Faculty of Natural Resources, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Tehran

3 Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering, Department of Agricultural Machinery Engineering, Faculty of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Tehran

Abstract

Furniture industry releases annually a large amount of volatile organic compound to the environment due to the use of adhesives, textiles, paints and coating materials. There are some different methods to measure the load of pollutions and the environmental impacts. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is one of the best techniques. LCA is a technique in which all environmental impacts related to a product assessed all over its life cycle, from cradle to grave, and ultimately can be used to improve the production process and to prevent unsuitable environmental impacts. In summary, it can be concluded that the use of this technique is the basis for sustainable development and improving social, economic, and environmental indices. This study focused on the collecting of a comprehensive life cycle inventory data for comfortable furniture in two different production processes (B1 and B2) located in Tehran province, and analyzed the environmental impacts during the production process as gate to gate investigation. The results revealed that emissions in production process B1 were higher than that of production process B2. The reason for this is that basic operations such as sawing and frame assembling along with final operation have been done in the same unit for case B1. Textile production and usage, and polyurethane foam were identified as the main hotspots, respectively. Moreover, the results showed that comfortable furniture production process has the highest effects on ecosystem quality, human health, and resources (fossil fuels and mines), respectively.

Keywords

References

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Iranian Journal of Wood and Paper Industries
Volume 7, Issue 3 - Serial Number 3
December 2016
Pages 475-485

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