Silviu Moga
Master Thesis - Environmental Engineering - 2019
This master thesis is structured in two parts:
- The first part is about a life cycle assessment (LCA) of the TEK building (i.e. Faculty of Engineering)
- The second part, thrives to focus on a CO2 footprint account for a company product: a bench made by TimberNest
Life Cycle Assessment of the TEK Building
For the LCA of the TEK building a consequential LCA approach was taken in order to unveil the environmental impacts of the building over its whole life cycle from raw material extraction to the end-of-life stage. The results showed that in the use stage of the building, the use of electricity and heat have the biggest impacts over the environment and the categories that were affected the most were climate change and land use.
CO2 footprint account for a bench made by TimberNest
Regarding the second part of the thesis, for the bench made by TimberNest, a CO2 footprint account was conducted to see the CO2 emissions of the bench over the environment. Here, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol was used alongside with the ISO 14067 standard. TimberNest is a Danish start-up company from Odense who wants to become a CO2 neutral company in the future.
To assess the carbon dioxide emissions for this bench, an LCA approach was chosen, focusing on the Climate Change impact indicator. The bench is made from two different types of wood (douglas pine and oak) and because of this, four scenarios were developed for the study. The first two scenarios are represented by the benches made out of Douglas Pine and Oak, both having the same disposal procedures: incineration of wood and recycling of screws. The other two scenarios have just recycling as the main disposal type, resulting in less greenhouse gas emissions.
The results showed that the best solutions for the company to become CO2 neutral are: first to improve their disposal techniques by recycling every material from the bench and avoiding incineration. Second is by using a circular economy approach where old components can be reused in other benches instead of making a by-product out of them, using less energy in this way.
Collaborating Partners
TimberNest
Copyright: TimberNest