Life Cycle Assessment on Autoliv’s Electronic Control Unit

Abstract

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is conducted in this master thesis, it is a significant and comprehensive methodology to assess the environmental performance of product throughout its whole life cycle. In this study, the electronic control unit (ECU) is considered as the studied product, produced by Autoliv Sverige AB. Regarding the whole life cycle for ECU, it starts from raw material acquisition, manufacturing of components, assembling at Autoliv Motala, use in cars, end up with waste treatment of ECU. The outcomes from this LCA study reveal that total potentials for global warming are 22.7kg of CO2 equivalents, for acidification are 481.59g of SO2 equivalents, for eutrophication are 5.45 g of PO4 3- equivalents, for human toxicological impacts are 3.26 kg of 1,4-dichlorobenzene equivalents, for ecotoxicity impacts to air, water and soil are 110.8kg, 49.53kg and 1,49g of 1,4-dichlorobenzene equivalents individually. Besides, almost 1113kg of water and 320.2MJ of energy are consumed in ECU’s whole life cycle, also generating 246.47 g of waste. All in all, the material production phase is the primary contributor for environmental loads. The environmental impacts from use phase are also significant in whole life cycle especially for global warming. Additionally, other phases have the much less contribution for environmental impacts comparing with raw material production and use phases. In the conclusion section, several suggestions are given for the sake of improving the environmental quality, including the parts of potential use and further studies. Regarding the potential use, the proposals in terms of product development, logistics plan improvement and marketing assistance are came up with for company of Autoliv. Speaking of further studies, some recommendations for the future LCA works are also presented, such as improvement of data quality, self-improvement assessment and establishment of network for LCA communication.