| 1. |
- Clancy, Gunilla, 1968, et al.
(författare)
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Changing from petroleum to wood-based materials: critical review of how product sustainability characteristics can be assessed and compared
- 2013
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Ingår i: Journal of Cleaner Production. - : Elsevier BV. - 0959-6526 .- 1879-1786. ; 39, s. 372-385
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper reports on a literature survey on available approaches for the assessment of product sustainability, with a specific focus on assessing the replacement of non-renewable petroleum-based materials with renewable wood-based materials in absorbent hygiene products. The results are contrasted to needs in a specific material development project. A diverse number of methods exist that can help in assessing different product sustainability characteristics for parts of or whole product lifecycles. None of the assessment methods found include guidelines for how to make a case-specific interpretation of sustainability and there is a general lack of assessment parameters that can describe considerations in the comparison between the use of wood or petroleum as main raw material. One reason for this is lack of knowledge and/or consensus on how to describe and assess impacts of land and water use, e.g. on ecosystem services, different types of resource depletion and social impacts.
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| 2. |
- Clancy, Gunilla, 1968, et al.
(författare)
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The ageing society – an example of consequences for biomass use for incontinence diapers in Europe
- 2011
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Ingår i: Poster presentation at the AGS annual meeting 'Sustainability and change', 23-25 January 2011, Göteborg, Sweden.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Increasing life expectancy results in an ageing society in parts of the world. The old of tomorrow are also expected to have higher comfort demands. One likely consequence is an increase in the need of such products as disposable incontinence diapers, which are today partly based on cellulose from forestry. A calculation of the potential increase for heavy incontinence care (assuming the use of disposable incontinence diapers) was made based on the demographic trends for Europe and on the yield from forestry performed under Nordic conditions. The calculation is using a parameterisation known from literature: I = i * m * u * P. It expresses the impact (I, in our case, forest area in ha) as a product of four factors that humans have the ability to change, in our case, i = ha Nordic forest area / kg material, m = kg material / service, u = service / population in Europe, and P = population in Europe. The 'service' is to keep a customer with heavy incontinence dry for a year, assuming that the same fraction of the population above 50 years as today will need heavy incontinence protection. Under these assumptions, the forest area needed for heavy incontinence care in Europe will increase with about 75% until 2050. According to the current work in the WooDi research project, aiming at producing a wood-based diaper, if the petroleum-based material in the absorbent core in the diapers were to be replaced by wood-based, this would increase the needed forest area to about 136%, assuming a 1:1 replacement ratio by weight which seems to be a low estimate. This is still a small share of the total European forest area (0.2%). However, such an increase in wood demand for only one product is not without problems, since forests to a large extent are already utilised, e.g. for timber and pulp and paper production, and since there is an expected increase in demand for bio-based fuels and materials for replacement of fossil-based products, thus competing for either the yield from the forests or for the land area. At the same time, there are rising concerns regarding biodiversity and other ecosystem services in connection to forestry.
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| 3. |
- Clancy, Gunilla, 1968, et al.
(författare)
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Actionable knowledge to develop more sustainable products
- 2013
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Ingår i: 6th International Conference on Life Cycle Management, Göteborg, 25-28 August.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Companies need to develop more sustainable products to fit into more sustainable future markets, and there is need for ways to guide towards and compare sustainability already early in material or product development. How this can be handled has been studied through action research in a material development project aiming to develop wood-based materials to replace petroleum-based materials while ensuring a more sustainable product. A specific focus was put on creating actionable knowledge to facilitate innovation towards more sustainable products by translating and integrating significant product sustainability characteristics into each team member’s specific area of expertise and everyday work. The insights are now used in different other on-going projects in a textile industry setting and in relation to companies’ management systems.
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| 4. |
- Peterson, Andrew A., et al.
(författare)
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Thermochemical biofuel production in hydrothermal media: A review of sub- and supercritical water technologies
- 2008
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Ingår i: Energy and Environmental Sciences. - : Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). - 1754-5692 .- 1754-5706. ; 1:1, s. 32-65
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Hydrothermal technologies are broadly defined as chemical and physical transformations in high-temperature (200–600° C), high-pressure (5–40 MPa) liquid or supercritical water. This thermochemical means of reforming biomass may have energetic advantages, since, when water is heated at high pressures a phase change to steam is avoided which avoids large enthalpic energy penalties. Biological chemicals undergo a range of reactions, including dehydration and decarboxylation reactions, which are influenced by the emperature, pressure, concentration, and presence of homogeneous or heterogeneous catalysts. Several biomass hydrothermal conversion processes are in development or demonstration. Liquefaction processes are generally lower temperature (200–400° C) reactions which produce liquid products, often called ‘‘bio-oil’’ or ‘‘bio-crude’’.Gasification processes generally take place at higher temperatures (400–700° C) and can produce methane or hydrogen gases in high yields.
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| 5. |
- Akambih Tajam, Joseph, et al.
(författare)
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SMALL SCALE IN-SITU BIOREMEDIATIONOF DIESEL CONTAMINATED SOIL –SCREENING LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE
- 2010
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Ingår i: ECO-TECH´10, 22-24 November 2010, Kalmar, Sweden. ; , s. 827-835
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Spillage of diesel oil and other petroleum products is a commonly creating need for siteremediation of contaminated soils. In Sweden the most common remediation action isexcavation of the contaminated soil and off site biological treatment by composting.However, a number of small sites spread out in rural areas end up low on priority lists, andwill not be attended to within foreseeable future if ever. For such areas a low cost, easy toapply remediation techniques would be of interest. Enhanced bioremediation of dieselcontaminants in soil by whey addition has been demonstrated in lab scale. Whey is a byproductfrom cheese production. A first pilot remediation trial on an actual site in Gäddede,County of Jämtland, was started the summer of 2010. Using this site as a case study ascreening life cycle assessment model has been set up. The goal of the study was toinvestigate the environmental performance of the whey method, to benchmark the wheymethod toward the excavation and composting practice and to identify environmental hotspots in the whey treatment life cycle. The study aims at establishing if further work shouldbe put into developing the method, or if the environmental performance is such that the wheymethod should be abandoned. It should be noted that even with a slightly worseenvironmental performance compared to other remediation alternatives whey treatment couldstill be of interest, since the small scale sites in rural areas we talk about here otherwise mostoften would not be attended to.Results from the screening life cycle assessment indicate a rather good environmentalperformance of the whey method, partly depending on impact category considered. For thewhey method, impacts from farming activities in the milk production chain allocated to thewhey give significant contributions. Transportation gives important impacts from both thewhey method and the excavation and off site composting, thus logistics should always beconsidered and optimized. The whey on-site treatment could be an interesting alternative forbioremediation especially at sites that would not otherwise be treated, due to small size orremote location.
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| 6. |
- Arvidsson, Rickard, 1984, et al.
(författare)
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How do we know the energy use when producing biomaterials or biofuels?
- 2012
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Ingår i: Proceedings of ECO-TECH 2012.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- How much fossil energy that is used in the production of biomaterials or biofuels (e.g. fuel used in harvesting) is a parameter of obvious interest when optimizing the production systems. To use more fossil fuels in the production of a biofuel than what will be available as the biofuel product is obviously a bad idea. With increasing interest in biomaterials and biofuels, a shift from a sole focus on fossil energy will be necessary. Optimized use of energy over the whole life cycle is one important parameter to ensure sustainability. However, to report and interpret values on life cycle energy use is not as straight forward as what might immediately be perceived. The impact category ‘energy use’ is frequently used but is generally not applied in a transparent and consistent way between different studies. Considering the increased focus on biofuels, it is important to inform companies and policy-makers about the energy use of biofuels in relevant and transparent ways with well-defined indicators. The present situation in how energy use indicators are applied was studied in a set of LCA studies of biofuels. It was found that the choice of indicator was seldom motivated or discussed in the examined reports and articles, and five inherently different energy use indicators were observed: (1) fossil energy, (2) secondary energy, (3) cumulative energy demand (primary energy), (4) net energy balance, and (5) total extracted energy. As a test, we applied these five energy use indicators to the same cradle-to-gate production system and they give considerably different output numbers of energy use. This in itself is not unexpected, but indicates the importance of clearly identifying, describing and motivating the choice of energy use indicator. Direct comparisons between different energy use results could lead to misinformed policy decisions.
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| 7. |
- Arvidsson, Rickard, 1984, et al.
(författare)
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Life cycle assessment of hydrotreated vegetable oil from rape, oil palm and Jatropha
- 2011
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Ingår i: Journal of Cleaner Production. - : Elsevier BV. - 0959-6526 .- 1879-1786. ; 19:2-3, s. 128-137
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A life cycle assessment of hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) biofuel was performed. The study wascommissioned by Volvo Technology Corporation and Volvo Penta Corporation as part of an effort to gaina better understanding of the environmental impact of potential future biobased liquid fuels for cars andtrucks. The life cycle includes production of vegetable oil from rape, oil palm or Jatropha, transport of theoil to the production site, production of the HVO from the oil, and combustion of the HVO. The functionalunit of the study is 1 kWh energy out from the engine of a heavy-duty truck and the environmentalimpact categories that are considered are global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential (AP),eutrophication potential (EP) and embedded fossil production energy. System expansion was used totake into account byproducts from activities in the systems; this choice was made partly to make thisstudy comparable to results reported by other studies. The results show that HVO produced from palmoil combined with energy production from biogas produced from the palm oil mill effluent has thelowest environmental impact of the feedstocks investigated in this report. HVO has a significantly lowerlife cycle GWP than conventional diesel oil for all feedstocks investigated, and a GWP that is comparableto results for e.g. rape methyl ester reported in the literature. The results show that emissions from soilcaused by microbial activities and leakage are the largest contributors to most environmental impactcategories, which is supported also by other studies. Nitrous oxide emissions from soil account for morethan half of the GWP of HVO. Nitrogen oxides and ammonia emissions from soil cause almost all of thelife cycle EP of HVO and contribute significantly to the AP as well. The embedded fossil production energywas shown to be similar to results for e.g. rape methyl ester from other studies. A sensitivity analysisshows that variations in crop yield and in nitrous oxide emissions from microbial activities in soil cancause significant changes to the results.
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| 8. |
- Clancy, Gunilla, 1968, et al.
(författare)
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Approach to establish relevant sustainability assessment parameters in product development
- 2011
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Ingår i: Poster presentation at the Second Symposium on Industrial Ecology for Young Professionals, 11 June 2011, Berkeley, California.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Since companies need to develop more sustainable products to stay in business in the long term, there is a demand for ways to assess and compare product sustainability already in product development. This is studied through action research performed within the “wood based diaper” material development project (WooDi) aiming to develop a wood based material to replace a petroleum based while ensuring a more sustainable product. Methods used so far evaluating environmental product development to a large extend is based on optimization of the present system (improving or replacing parts giving large impacts) or to some extent taking the future into account e.g. by consequential LCA studies. Such approaches will result in marginal improvements of the present situation, but don’t fully take advantage of truly innovative processes or the fact that a more sustainable future society might put very different demands on products compared to the strictest requirements of today. Based on what was found in relevant literature, most often lists of predetermined parameters are being used without critical reflection on their importance in light of the specific situation. There is a specific lack of parameters describing the sustainability impacts of a shift from fossil to biomass resources in a life cycle perspective, e.g. related to competition for resources. As a result, an approach for establishing relevant product sustainability parameters is presented, emphasising the need to bringing in the diverse knowledge and experiences of the product development team members as vital for a successful result. The parameters are intended to guide product development as well as to be a base for a sustainability comparison of a new product with a current product.
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| 9. |
- Clancy, Gunilla, 1968, et al.
(författare)
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Approach to establish relevant sustainability assessment parameters in product development
- 2011
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Ingår i: Poster presentation at the 6th International Conference on Industrial Ecology 'Science, Systems and Sustainablity' 7-10 June 2011, Berkeley, California.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Since companies need to develop more sustainable products to stay in business in the long term, there is a demand for ways to assess and compare product sustainability already in product development. This is attended to in the WooDi research project which aims at developing a wood based material to replace a petroleum based one in an incontinence diaper while ensuring a more sustainable product. Acknowledging the vast number of choices made in product development and their potentially large effect on the sustainability impact of the resulting product leads to the conclusion that assessment of product sustainability should be made throughout the process and be used to guide development. To gain a deeper understanding of the requirements and barriers in assessing product sustainability and guiding product development towards a more sustainable product, several workshops and seminars were carried out in the WooDi project, in parallel to literature surveys. Based on what was found in relevant literature, most often lists of predetermined parameters are being used without critical reflection on their importance in light of the specific situation. Additionally there is a lack of parameters describing the sustainability impacts of a shift from fossil to biomass resources in a life cycle perspective, e.g. related to competition for resources. As a result, an approach was developed for establishing relevant product sustainability parameters, where the parameters are intended to guide product development as well as to be a base for a sustainability comparison of a new product with a current product. It starts with defining what ‘sustainable product’ is in the specific case.This approach emphasises the need of bringing in the product development team members’ diverse knowledge and experiences as vital for a successful result. Practical experience of using the proposed framework throughout a project is still needed for evaluating it and identifying its limits.The presentation reports on the developed approach and on efforts to define what should be meant by ‘sustainable product’ in the specific case.
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| 10. |
- Clancy, Gunilla, 1968, et al.
(författare)
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Comparing the sustainability of using a non-renewable oil based material in an absorbent hygiene product with that of using a renewable wood based material
- 2009
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Ingår i: Poster presentation at the Eforwood conference 'Shape your sustainability tools - and let your tools shape you', 23-24 September 2009, Uppsala, Sweden. ; , s. 2-3
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The WooDi project – the Wood based Diaper, is a research collaboration between industry and university. The goal of the project is to make a new diaper that is more sustainable than today’s product, by replacing non-renewable North Sea oil based materials in the diaper with a renewable material based on wood from the Nordic countries. This calls for a way to compare the sustainability associated with using the different raw materials.Comparisons of the implications of using crude oil and biomass resources have so far mainly been made for fuels used in transportation. The available literature assessing the use of fossil fuels versus bio-fuels focuses primarily on greenhouse gas emissions, often referred to as the carbon footprint [1]. It does not include, e.g., effects on ecosystem quality, employment, economy, etc. The increased use of bio-fuels for transportation is discussed in relation to food and feed grain prices, as well as negative environmental impacts arising from deforestation and land conversion, as food and fuel compete for scarce land resources [2, 3].Some life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) weighting methods include resource use, but are generally based on only one or a few parameters. One example is the monetary values used by the environmental priority strategies (EPS) method [4], which involves a weighting for renewable and non-renewable resources based on the cost of producing an equivalent from renewable resources.For forestry there are several voluntary sustainable forest management (SFM) systems, e.g., Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) scheme. Requirements within such systems include a broader set of aspects than greenhouse gas emissions or available LCIA weighting methods. The SFM laboratory [5] suggests eight different sustainability criteria such as the maintenance of ecosystem health and vitality; cultural, social and spiritual needs and values and maintenance of the forests’ contribution to global carbon cycles. No comparable sustainable management criteria have been found for fossil oil extraction and use, other than an initiative with recommendations on how to include biodiversity into strategies for oil and gas development [6].Consequently, there exists no readily available method for comparing the sustainability of using North Sea oil and Nordic wood as raw materials. The methods mentioned above can be a starting point but need to be developed further. The method development work carried out in the WooDi project should also be useful for other sustainability assessments comparing forest and fossil resources.References1. Johnson, E. Biofuel vs petrofuel carbon footprints: it’s about the land, in SETAC Europe 14th LCA Case Study Symposium. 2007. Göteborg.2. Early, J. and A. McKeown, Smart Choices for Biofuels. 2009, Sierra Club, Worldwatch Institute, Washington.3. Banse, M., P. Nowicki, and H.v. Meijl, Why are current world food prices so high? 2008, LEI Wageningen UR, Wageningen, The Netherlands.4. Steen, B., A systematic approach to environmental priority strategies in product development (EPS). Version 2000 - General System Characteristics, 1999.5. Sustainable forest management - indicator knowledge base. [cited 6th April 2009]. Available from: www.sfmindicators.org.6. Integrating Biodiversity Conservation into Oil & Gas Development, 2003.Acknowledgements Financial support from Vinnova, SCA Hygiene Products AB and Södra Cell AB is greatly appreciated.
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