Integration of life cycle assessment and life cycle costing for the eco-design of rubber products

Yahong Dong,Yating Zhao,Yan He,Hong Wang,Guangyi Lin,Peng Liu

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-04633-6

Yahong Dong, Yating Zhao + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-04633-6

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Abstract

Rubber hoses are a category of rubber products that are widely and intensively employed in construction sites for concrete conveying. There has been lack of study to investigate the life cycle environmental and economic impacts of the rubber hoses as an industrial product. In this study, we analyze four types of rubber hoses with the inner layer made of different rubber composites to resist abrasion, i.e., Baseline, S-I, S-II and S-III. Tests of the wear resistance are carried out in the laboratory and S-III shows high abrasion resisting performance with the concrete conveying volume up to 20,000 m3 during the service life. Life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC) models are established for evaluating the four types of rubber hoses. A target function is developed to integrate LCA and LCC by converting the LCA results to the environmental costs. It is found that S-III can save 13% total cost comparing to Baseline. The production stage is the largest contributor to the environmental single score, while the use stage is the largest contributor to the life cycle cost. Sensitivity analyses are conducted and the results of this study are validated with the previous studies. The integrated method of LCA and LCC developed in this study paves a way for the eco-design of industrial rubber hoses and is potentially applicable to other rubber products.

Highlights

Rubber hoses are a category of rubber products that are widely and intensively employed in construction sites for concrete conveying
For the impact categories of OD, IR, HOF, EOF, TET, FRD and WD, the type Baseline has the lowest environmental impacts, while S-III has the largest impacts. This is mainly caused by the longer service life of S-III as compared to the Baseline, which increases the environmental impacts
It is found that the total cost of the Baseline rubber hose is 6528 CNY, in which the environmental costs account for 54%

Summary

Introduction

Rubber hoses are a category of rubber products that are widely and intensively employed in construction sites for concrete conveying. They found that the addition of mixed fillers based on sustainable biochar (BC) and carbon black (CB) has a significant improvement on the reduction of rolling resistance. This expanded the application of carbon black in rubber hose These studies can largely improve the properties of rubber and the performance of rubber products. The previous LCA studies of rubbers include the evaluation of greenhouse gas e missions[19], the calculation of water footprint[20], the evaluation of environmental performance of latex[21] and rubber 22, the environmental impacts of life cycle of t ires[23,24,25], LCA of scrap tires[26,27,28], etc

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