International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) – Volume 12 Number 10 - Jun 2014
Assessment of Environmental Impact: Sub
Assembly ‘Cam Shaft Valve’ of
Engine Group of ‘two-wheeler’
Ms. Suman Sharma1†
1
Dr. Smita Manepatil2
Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, TRUBA College of Engineering and Technology, Indore-452009, Madhya
Pradesh, India.
2
Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, SGS Institute of Technology and Science, Indore-452001, Madhya
Pradesh, India.
ABSTRACT
The investigation of environmental impact of products and processes
has become a key issue. The environment has some capacity to
absorb these emissions so emitted to a certain level without lasting
the damage. All products have an impact on the environment during
their life-cycle spanning all phases from cradle to grave. The
emissions have harmful effect at local, regional and global levels.
LCA is a means of deriving a quantitative evaluation of
environmental impact of product design and thereby refining product
quality and characteristics.
Now a day, a major part of our society using the two-wheeler in large
quantity and its becomes the necessity of day to day life. This work
deals with the investigation of some parts of product, i.e. ‘cam shaft
valve’ assembly of two-wheeler for environmental impact
assessment through using scientific approach of Life Cycle
Assessment (LCA). The assessment has been carried out for three
main stages of life cycle of the product. LCA method considered for
this work is Environmental Design of Industrial Products (EDIP). It
is observed that, as per the method used Eco-toxicity, human toxicity
and global warming is more as compared to other impact categories.
Keyword: Life cycle assessment, environmental impact assessment,
EDIP, Evaluation, Investigation, Subassembly, Two-wheeler.
1.
Introduction
In the race of industrialization and production of goods and
services that enrich our life, it seems that we are usually least
concerned about the most valuable natural environment that
existed when the human civilization had begun. All products
have an impact on the environment during their life-cycle
spanning all phases from cradle to grave. The emissions have
harmful effect at local, regional and global levels.
In our tryst of comfort by the production and consumption of
goods and services we have an equally important social
responsibility of up-keeping the nature for our own selfish
desire of sustainability of our future generations. This work
deals with the investigation of some parts of product for
environmental impact assessment using scientific approach of
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The approach of Life cycle
Assessment is a “cradle-to-grave” approach for assessing
industrial systems. “Cradle-to-grave” begins with the
ISSN: 2231-5381
gathering of raw materials from the earth to create the product
and ends at the point when all materials are disposed off.
LCA evaluates all stages of a product’s life from the
perspective that they are interdependent, meaning that one
operation leads to the next. LCA enables the estimation of the
cumulative environmental impacts resulting from all stages in
the product life cycle. [1]
2.
Literature Review
Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is a tool used to
identify the environmental, social and economic impacts of a
project prior to decision-making. Environmental Impact
Assessment is a planning tool that its main purpose is: "to give
the environment its due place in the decision making process
by clearly evaluating the environmental consequences of a
proposed activity before action is taken. The concept has
ramifications in the long run for almost all development
activity because sustainable development depends on
protecting the natural resources which is the foundation for
further development"[2].
The present day trend is to develop an engineering product as
‘green product’ as a strategy for enhancing the environmental
performance for overall socio-economic development. This
approach is popularly known as ‘Life Cycle Assessment' and
briefly termed as LCA. The emissions of the system in the
defined boundaries can be evaluated using the inputs of raw
materials and energy so give output such as atmospheric
emissions. Hence, in engineering, LCA has become a
powerful tool to evaluate environmental impact assessment of
a product.[3]
Life cycle assessment is a method for assessing the
environmental considerations of a product or service
throughout its entire life cycle. A life cycle impact assessment
(LCIA) provides a systematic procedure for classifying and
characterizing these types of environmental effects. [4]. The
environmental impacts as per LCIA are, typically focuses on
the potential impacts to three main categories: human health,
ecological health, and resource depletion. [5]
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International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) – Volume 12 Number 10 - Jun 2014
3.
Objective of Investigation
The objective of this work is to investigate some parts of
product for its environmental impact on various impact
categories according to the selected LCA method, i.e. EDIP
(Environmental Design of Industrial Product). And interpret
the result which may help the decision makers of design and
manufacturing.
4.
Methodology
There are three main stages of LCIA (Life Cycle Impact
Assessment) according to ISO14040, i.e. Inventory Analysis,
Impact Assessment , and Interpretation [7]
Steps followed during the work,
 The first step is to select the product or parts of
product for which the Impact Assessment is to be
carried out. It is of any kind.
 Next step is the collection of LCI (Life Cycle
inventory) for all materials used to manufacture and
the manufacturing stage of life of product.
 To create the process inventory table or LCI table for
different materials and process.
 To compute the quantitative impact of selected
product or part for all stages of life cycle.
 The quantitative evaluation of impact has done and
then grouped into respective impact categories.
 The results of impact are presented graphically.
 The data and the corresponding graphs for resultgeneration are saved for comparison purposes as well
as for future reference.
 In the final step i.e. interpretation, the data are
analyzed for various types and levels (i.e.
quantitatively) of impacts to environment and human
health.
5.
The Investigation
Assessment
of
Product
for
The evaluation this is done for three main stages of life, i.e.
raw material acquisition (LCS-01), raw material
manufacturing (LCS-02) and part manufacturing (LCS-03).
6.
The quantitative evaluation of the collected life cycle
inventory according to EDIP, for selected parts of product at
different stages of manufacturing of material is done through
the software ‘SSLCASoft’. The environmental impact of steel
parts of Cam Shaft Valve (CSV) subassembly of Engine
Group at various life cycle stages is as shown in the figure 1.
The description of impact in brief is as below:
Figure 1: Environmental Impact Evaluation of subassembly
‘ Cam Shaft Valve’ of ‘Engine Group’ for steel parts stageswise



Impact

The subassembly ‘Cam Shaft Valve’ of Engine group of twowheeler has been selected for this work of assessment of
environmental impact. The product is used by masses in large
quantity. The material and manufacturing process of these
parts is quite stable. This is considered for quantitative
evaluation of the Impact of different impact categories as per
selected LCA method EDIP. According to the selected LCA
method, i.e. EDIP-03, the impact categories evaluated for
environmental impact assessment are ecotoxicity water acute
(EWA); ecotoxicity water chronic (EWC); ecotoxicity soil
chronic (ESC); human toxicity air (HTA); human toxicity
water (HTW); human toxicity soil (HTS); global warming
(GW); acidification (AC); terrestrial eutrophication (TET);
aquatic eutrophication EP(N) (AETN); aquatic eutrophication
EP(P) (AETP); ozone depletion (OD); ozone formation
vegetation (OFV); ozone formation human (OFH).
Results and Discussions
The impact of steel parts of Cam Shaft Valve is
higher at stage LCS-02 as compared to other two
stages.
The impact affects the EWA at stage LCS-01 and
affect HTA at stage LCS-02 and LCS-03,
prominently.
The GW is very close at LCS-02 and at LCS-03. The
impact on OFV is more at LCS-01 as compared to
LCS-02 and LCS-03.
The impact on AC and TET is very close with each
other and at LCS-02 and LCS-03 also.
Some impact categories have very less impact as compared to
other and those are not visible on the graph of normal scale.
To avoid it the graphical presentation of results are shown by
using logarithmic scale.
7. References
1.
T.J. O'Neill , Life Cycle Assessment and Environmental Impact of
Products, ISBN 978-1-85957-364-8, pp 134, 2003.
2.
Pre Consultants, Simapro-6 Database Manual Methods Library,
http://www.pre.nl/download/manuals/DatabaseManualMethods.pd
f (June 2004)
3.
Roger Bacon Drive Reston, Mary Ann Curran, ‘Life Cycle
Assessment: Principles and practice’, Scientific Applications
International Corporation (SAIC), National risk Management
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International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) – Volume 12 Number 10 - Jun 2014
Research Laboratory, Office of Research and Development, U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, Cincinnati, Ohio 45268,
EPA/600/R-06/060 May 2006.
4.
Jyri Seppala, ‘Life Cycle Impact Assessment based on Decision
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Technology, Department of Engineering Physics and Mathematics,
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(Espoo, Finland), FIN-02015 HUT, FINLAND, August 2003,
www.sal.hut.fi/Publications/r-index.html,
5.
Certified B-Corporation.net, ‘LCA for a Whiteboard Marker’,
Asian Institute of Technology’s, pp 3-7, February 2008.
6.
Rolf Frischknecht, Niels Jungbluth, Implementation of Life Cycle
Impact Assessment Methods, Swiss Centre for Life Cycle
Inventory, Dübendorf, Data v2.0 December 2007.
7.
Allan Astrup Jensen, Kim Christiansen, John Elkington, Life
Cycle Assessment, Environmental Issues Series, A guide to
approaches,
experiences
and
information
sources,
(LCA),
European Environment Agency. SustainAbility , Denmark, United
Kingdom, August 1997.
8.
Widmer, R., Oswald-Krapf, H., Sinha-Khetriwal, D.,Schnellmann,
M., Bön, H., Global perspectives on ewaste. Environmental Impact,
Assessment Review, 25 (5), pp. 436-458, July 2005.
9.
M. Charter, T. Clark, An eco-design route map for the Taiwan
electronics sector, The Centre for Sustainable Design, UK, for the
Department of Industrial Technology and the Electronics Testing
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10.
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Management in the Electronics Sector in China, Hong Kung and
Taiwan. The Centre for Sustainable Design: UK, for DTI: UK,
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