Voluntary GHG management using a life cycle approach. A case study

Voluntary GHG management is a primary issue for many organizations. To support organizations with this activity, authoritative bodies have published many different guidelines. Nevertheless, these guidelines show limitations in identification of the direct and indirect processes that have a major impact on climate change, which should be considered in GHG management.In this paper, a life cycle approach is used to identify the processes of an organization and its supply chain that have major impacts on climate change. The results show that this approach is compatible with the current ISO standards and that in the case study the greatest emissions come from the organization’s indirect processes.     

Application of Ecological Footprint Analysis on nectarine production: methodological issues and results from a case study in Italy

Ecological Footprint Analysis (EFA) is an environmental accounting system that provides an aggregate indicator which is both scientifically robust and easy to understand by non-experts. Although based on the lifestyle consumption of natural resources, recent improvements in the methodology now allow the application of EFA to a final product. Thus the resulting footprint value represents the environmental cost of all of the activities required to create, use and/or dispose of a particular product. The application of EFA to agricultural systems is still uncommon and examples in the fruit sector rare. In this work a detailed application of EFA to a commercial nectarine orchard in Piedmont (Italy) is presented. In contrast to previous studies, we considered not only the one-year field operations, but also the whole lifetime of the orchard. The calculation was conducted for six different orchard stages: (ST1) nursery propagation of the young plants; (ST2) orchard establishment, (ST3) young trees producing low yields, (ST4) mature trees at full production, (ST5) declining trees with low yields, and finally (ST6) orchard removal. The environmental costs at each stage are presented and related to each other on the basis of the relative footprint value. Results highlight the importance of applying EFA to the entire lifecycle of orchard production: ST4 accounted for the majority of costs at 65% followed by ST2, ST3 and ST5 at or near 10%, whilst the costs of ST1 and ST6 were negotiable. Thus it is the type of ST4 production used which can have the greatest impact on EFA values.     

Traffic-related platinum and rhodium concentrations in the atmosphere of Rome

Platinum and Rh content in the atmosphere of Rome as released by car catalytic converters was monitored from 1998 to 2000 in six urban sites with different traffic intensities and in one rural area. Samples collected with medium-volume PM10 samplers were analyzed by Sector Field Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (SF-ICP-MS). The Pt content varied from 2.4 to 60.1 pg m(-3) (mean value 17.8 pg m(-3)) at the urban locations whilst that of Rh spanned the range 0.8-9.4 pg m(-3) (average value 4.0 pg m(-3)). The rural area showed metal levels mostly below the limits of detection, pointing to automobile traffic as the main source of those elements in the urban atmosphere. The highest mean concentrations of Pt and Rh, ie. 22.2 and 5.0 pg m(-3), were detected along the ring road where the traffic density is high (>100,000 vehicles per day) and the driving speed between 100 and 120 km h(-1). The lowest Pt and Rh mean concentrations, i.e. 11.4 and 3.4 pg m(-3), were measured downtown, where traffic density is lower (20,000 vehicles per day) and the driving speed is limited (50 km h(-1)). Significant concentrations of Pt and Rh were found in the vicinity of traffic signals, indicating that the "stop-and-go" conditions might also affect their release. The measured Pt/Rh ratio spanned the range 3.3-5.9 in accordance with that present in the more commonly used gasoline car catalytic converters. Seasonal variations between wintertime (with Pt and Rh mean concentrations of 23.8 and 5.1 pg m(-3), respectively) and summertime (with Pt and Rh mean concentrations of 14.1 and 3.3 pg m(-3), respectively) were also observed.     

Analysis of the influence of passenger vehicles front-end design on pedestrian lower extremity injuries by means of the LLMS model

Objective: This work aims at investigating the influence of some front-end design parameters of a passenger vehicle on the behavior and damage occurring in the human lower limbs when impacted in an accident.

Methods: The analysis is carried out by means of finite element analysis using a generic car model for the vehicle and the lower limbs model for safety (LLMS) for the purpose of pedestrian safety. Considering the pedestrian standardized impact procedure (as in the 2003/12/EC Directive), a parametric analysis, through a design of experiments plan, was performed. Various material properties, bumper thickness, position of the higher and lower bumper beams, and position of pedestrian, were made variable in order to identify how they influence the injury occurrence. The injury prediction was evaluated from the knee lateral flexion, ligament elongation, and state of stress in the bone structure.

Results: The results highlighted that the offset between the higher and lower bumper beams is the most influential parameter affecting the knee ligament response. The influence is smaller or absent considering the other responses and the other considered parameters. The stiffness characteristics of the bumper are, instead, more notable on the tibia. Even if an optimal value of the variables could not be identified trends were detected, with the potential of indicating strategies for improvement.

Conclusions: The behavior of a vehicle front end in the impact against a pedestrian can be improved optimizing its design. The work indicates potential strategies for improvement. In this work, each parameter was changed independently one at a time; in future works, the interaction between the design parameters could be also investigated. Moreover, a similar parametric analysis can be carried out using a standard mechanical legform model in order to understand potential diversities or correlations between standard tools and human models.     

Recursive Operability Analysis as a decision support tool for Risk-Based Maintenance

This work was developed with the support of MEMC, one of the most important producers of ultra-pure silicon wafers for electronic applications throughout the world. The availability of ultra-pure water is of prime importance in the silicon production process. In order to maximize the availability of UP water, MEMC has developed a preventive maintenance program and a detailed record of each maintenance intervention is recorded. This has allowed a complete failure rate data bank to be developed. In order to optimize the maintenance intervention, a Recursive Operability Analysis (ROA) has been used as a decision support tool. The results of the ROA, coupled with the failure rates, have made it possible to calculate the expected number of events (ENE) of various top events (TEs). The magnitude of each TE has been estimated on the basis of the monetary losses provoked by each event. The risk then has been calculated and the events ranked on this basis. Maintenance policies have been optimized with the aim of reducing the risk of the top ranked events.     

Municipal solid waste management in Pudong New Area, China

The increase in population, the rapid economic growth and the rise in community living standards accelerate municipal solid waste (MSW) generation in developing cities. This problem is especially serious in Pudong New Area, Shanghai, China. The daily amount of MSW generated in Pudong was about 1.11 kg per person in 2006. According to the current population growth trend, the solid waste quantity generated will continue to increase with the city's development. In this paper, we describe a waste generation and composition analysis and provide a comprehensive review of municipal solid waste management (MSWM) in Pudong. Some of the important aspects of waste management, such as the current status of waste collection, transport and disposal in Pudong, will be illustrated. Also, the current situation will be evaluated, and its problems will be identified.     

PCDD/Fs and PCBs in ambient air in a highly industrialized city in Northern Italy

Ambient air samples were collected in five locations around a polychlorobiphenyl (PCB) production plant in a highly industrialized city in the north of Italy, for the analysis of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs) and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs) and PCBs.PCDD/F atmospheric concentrations were lower than those generally detected in urban areas, while PCB concentrations were higher than in urban and industrialized areas in other countries, especially in the locations closest to the plant. To identify source emissions responsible for air pollution we used principal component analysis (PCA) to compare the “fingerprint” of the air in Brescia with some source-related experimental and published data. This analysis showed that the PCDD/F fingerprints were more similar to steel plant emission data, while none of the PCB air patterns were comparable to emission profiles, indicating that different sources are responsible for the concentration of these two pollutants. The highest PCB concentrations detected in the areas closest to the chemical plant are indicative of its impact on the surrounding environment.