Life Cycle Assessment of Lawnmowers - Two Mowers’ Case Studies
Ladda ner
Typ
Examensarbete för masterexamen
Master Thesis
Master Thesis
Program
Industrial design engineering (MPDES), MSc
Publicerad
2010
Författare
Lan, Xing
Liu, Yu
Modellbyggare
Tidskriftstitel
ISSN
Volymtitel
Utgivare
Sammanfattning
Husqvarna AB, as a leading outdoor power company, has chosen two typical lawnmowers to analyse their environmental impacts from lawnmower branch. These two, one is the traditional walk-behind lawnmower LC48VE and the other one is named Automower 220AC. The distinct characteristic between these two is that the former one is petrol-driven while the latter is electricity-driven. Besides, the traditional one needs people’s control while the other can be programmed and work without external manpower. Due to the highly different working patterns and market consideration, the results for two cases will not be compared. The main reason for putting them together is for further product development and internal life cycle thinking auxiliary. Life cycle assessment was used to evaluate the environmental impacts of these two chosen products from production, use and maintenance and end-of-life phases. Data collection was the most time consuming part of the whole procedures and database in SimaPro were widely used but some processing data were still missing. The result shows that production phase which is also covering raw material extraction and use phase together contribute dominant environmental impacts. The characterisation and weighting methods as EPS2000 and Eco-indicator 99 were applied and shown difference in final results because of the different emphasis of each method. Sensitivity analysis showed that increasing the share of recycled metals could make better environmental performances of both mowers while electricity productions in different countries have obvious impacts on Automower’s impacts. In terms of product development, the most common way of using life cycle perspectives is through life cycle thinking (LCT) in design chain, in this case, which could mean increase of the ratio of recycled materials and improvement of products’ durability.
Beskrivning
Ämne/nyckelord
Miljöteknik , Environmental engineering