Estimation of environmental impacts of wood plastic composites (WPC)

Abstract

The objectives of this study are to estimate and to compare the environmental impacts of wood-plastic composites (WPCs) based on poly (vinyl chloride) (PVC) and polypropylene (PP). In this work, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used as an environmental tool for the evaluation. The system boundary is defined to include materials acquisition, transportation and production. The functional unit is defined as 1 kg of WPC produced. LCA software tool, Simpro 6.0 with Eco-Indicator 99 methods, is applied. From the results obtained, the environmental impacts of these two WPCs come mainly from the material acquisition and manufacturing phases. For WPC-PP/Sawdust, the environmental impacts are essentially from polypropylene production in the material acquisition phase which resulting in impact category of acidification, heavy metals and respiration f inorganic substances. For WPC-PVC/Sawdust, the impacts caused mainly from poly (vinyl chloride) which resulting in impact category of acidification, heavy metals and respiration of inorganic substances. It is also observed that the production of WPC-PVC/Sawdust creates the environmental impacts approximately 1.3 times higher than WPC-PP/Sawdust. Moreover, this research considers the suitable plant location by investigation of the environmental impacts from the transportation. Base on the results, the suitable manufacturing plant location for WPCs production should be located near market (customer) because the environmental impacts contributed from transportation when the factory is located close to market, are lower than that of when factory is located near raw material sources.