Industrial solar collector vs alternative solar collector: Environmental impact comparison by LCA perspective / Colector solar industrial versus colector solar alternativo: Comparação do impacto ambiental por perspectiva LCA

Abstract

Adequacy to sustainable development standards requires the use of methods and tools that enable the quantification and monitoring of environmental impacts related to production processes. As a subsidy to the potential reduction of impacts by solar collectors, this paper proposes an environmental evaluation, considering an alternative solar collector scenario to be compared with a commercial one, from the life cycle perspective. Using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool, the scenarios were evaluated using the SimaPro 8.5 software. The functional unit definition was defined with real system verification through the system preparation and operation in the laboratory, which is characterized as heating 26 L of water utilizing a thermosyphon system at a temperature greater than or equal to 38 ºC. Analyzing the LCA results, it was observed that the alternative system use offers environmental impacts reduction in all impact categories selected when compared to the commercial system. In addition, a sensitivity analysis was proposed considering a variation in polyester resin mass used in the alternative system. The simulation of changes in the resin resulted in even more decreases in the environmental impacts. Regarding thermal efficiency, the industrial system excelled in terms of absorption capacity and thermal reserve. Thus, the present paper using the analyzes proposed within the defined scope, allowed the comparison between the systems in such a way that it was possible to know whether the use of the alternative solar collector results in environmental advantages without losing thermal efficiency.