Life cycle engineering of production, use and recovery of self-chilling beverage cans

JOURNAL OF CLEANER PRODUCTION

卷:142

Article

Arena, Noemi¹  Sinclair, Philip¹  Lee, Jacquetta¹  Clift, Roland¹ 

[1] Univ Surrey, Ctr Environm & Sustainabil, Guildford, Surrey, England

关键词: Self-chilling systems;    Activated carbon;    Sustainable manufacturing;    Life cycle engineering;    Beverage cans;    Closed loop use;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.11.148

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

The chill-on-demand system is a new technology designed to provide cooled products on demand, thereby avoiding chilled storage. It uses the cooling effect provided by endothermic desorption of carbon dioxide previously adsorbed onto a bed of activated carbon and has the potential to be applied to any type of product that needs to be cold at the point of consumption. The principles of life cycle engineering have been utilized to evaluate the overall environmental performance of one possible application of this technology: a self-chilling beverage can, with a steel outer can to contain the beverage and an inner aluminium can to contain the adsorbent. An attributional life cycle assessment has been undertaken considering all the life cycle stages of a self chilling can: manufacture of each part of the beverage container, its utilization, collection of the used can, and management of the waste by reuse, recycling and landfilling. Activated carbon production is included in detail, to assess its contribution to the overall life cycle. The results are compared with those for conventional aluminium and steel beverage cans stored in two types of retail chiller: a single door refrigerator and a large open-front cooler. A sensitivity analysis explores alternative scenarios for activated carbon production and for recovery of the can components post-use for reuse or recycling. The results highlight the importance of using activated carbon produced from biomass by a process with efficient use of low-carbon electrical energy, energy recovery from waste streams and appropriate air pollution control, and of achieving high rates of recovery, re-use and recycling of the cans after use. The results suggest limited markets into which the product might be introduced, particularly where it would displace inefficient chilled storage in an electricity system with a high proportion of coal-fired generation. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licensesiby/4.0/).

【 授权许可】

Free