ME 4171 – Environmentally Conscious Design and Manufacture
Final Exam – April 30, 2004
Total 175 points
1 - General questions (3 points each - 75 points total)
1) What is a product life cycle, and what are its main phases?
2) What are the four steps in performing a Life-Cycle Assessment/Analysis?
3) Name the publicly available online resource that could used to find the amount of SO x output by a local power
plant?
4) Name five reasons why products become obsolete.
5) What is the difference between ISO 14000 and ISO 9000?
6) Name three sources for hydrogen for a hydrogen economy
7) Describe five ways to make (product) distribution more efficient.
8) What is the definition of a Small Quantity Generator (SQG)?
9) What are the differences between primary, secondary, and tertiary packaging?
10) Name four different key reasons that drive companies to become more environmentally friendly.
11) Given that shredding does not require manual disassembly, why do many consumer products still need to be
(partially) disassembled before being shredded?
12) What is natural capital? Provide three examples.
13) What are three key differences between manufacture and remanufacture?
14) What is the principle behind Volvo’s EPS (Environmental Priority System) Indicator?
15) What is better for the environment (and why): reusable coffee mugs or disposable cups?
16) What is the major drawback of the Swiss Eco-Points impact indicator?
17) What are the three components of sustainability; in other words, what does on wish to sustain?.
18) Give three widely used synonyms for Environmentally Conscious Design.
19) Name three fundamental differences between manufacture and remanufacture?
20) How do lean and just-in-time manufacture relate to environmental impact reduction?
21) What is the difference between societal cost accounting and full cost accounting?
22) What does MSDS stand for and what is it?
23) What is the significance of the European end-of-life vehicle directive?
24) What is sustainable development?
25) Name the governmental organization formed to “…assure safe and healthful working conditions for working
men and women.”
2 – Wallboard Fabrication (30 points)
Part A: Wallboard Fabrication
Wallboard, or plasterboard, as it is also called, is a thin coat of plaster between two sheets of cardboard.
Wallboard is made from plaster obtained by crushing and calcining natural gypsum extracted from quarries.
Desulfogypsum, a synthetic gypsum produced during oil and coal power plant smokestack scrubbing, can also be
used for wallboard plaster. Plaster is taken from storage and mixed with various solid and liquid additives and water
to make a uniform paste. One of these additives is a retarding agent that prevents the plaster from setting in the
mixer. After mixing, another additive is used to accelerate the setting process in order to harden the material prior to
cutting.
Two reels of cardboard continuously unwind and sandwich the plaster mixture. The wallboard paper unrolls
under the mixer, and the other unrolls above it. The top sheet of wallboard paper closes the mold which is thus
formed, and the edges are glued to the folded edges of the bottom sheet. The entire unit is laminated by a roller or a
forming plate and transported to the conveyor belt, then by rollers, up to the shearing stage. Once the plaster has set,
the boards are cut to the proper length.
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Following shearing, in-process wallboard moves to drying. Drying consists of circulating a flow of hot air in
order to extract the water which is in excess of that required to reconstitute the gypsum from the plaster. The wet
wallboard dries for approximately 45 minutes; then, it is removed from the drying oven. The wallboard is then cut
to length by rotary saws, assembled two by two and stacked in piles.
a) Draw a process flowchart showing input and output energy and materials for each process stage. (5 points)
b) Identify and describe what you think might be pollutants, and why. (5 points)
c) Identify and discuss options for pollution prevention for this process and each of its unit processes. Be as
complete as possible. (10 points)
Part B - Industrial Ecology
Looking beyond the wallboard fabrication factory’s fence, one discovers a convenient collocation of industries.
Three other industries moved into the sleepy farm community of K-burg in the last few decades. A nearby oil
refinery draws water for cooling and process steam from a nearby salt lake and crude oil from regular tanker
shipments. The refinery outputs marketable, liquid petroleum products, waste sludge and warmed cooling water. It
also flares light petroleum gases. A local coal-fired power plant also draws water from the lake; coal arrives by
train. Electricity, scrubber ash, flu gases and significant amounts of waste heat are the primary outputs from the
power station. A public-private partnership between the town and the power plant recently gained approval for a
project that would use a portion of the coal plants waste heat to provide district heating for the town. Capital has
already been allocated for the coal station retrofit.
Wallboard
Fabricator
Oil Refinery
Water
Coal Power
Plant
Lake
Water
Town
Pharmaceuticals
Manufacturer
Local Farms
A relative newcomer, the pharmaceutical manufacturer earned the ire of the community by tapping ground water
sources to provide process heat for its many bioreactors. The community’s proximity to the coast makes salt water
intrusion into aquifers a distinct possibility; so, industrial groundwater users are viewed critically. In addition to
pharmaceuticals, this manufacturer also produces significant amounts of nitrogen rich waste.
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d) What is industrial ecology? (3 point)
e) Combining information abstracted in part A with the additional information provided in Part B, propose and
discuss an industrial ecology [industrial eco-park] for K-burg (7 points)
3 – Refrigerator Recycling (35 points)
Many countries have instituted laws for recycling home appliances. For example, Japan has instituted a
Home Appliance Recycling Law. A representative refrigerator from Hungary has been taken for further
investigation (see Table 1).
Materials in refrigerator body
Compressor
PUR foam
6.440 kg
cast iron
1.748 kg
Fe-sheets
8.996 kg
steel, machined
1.663 kg
Plastics
6.681 kg
steel-sheets
4.090 kg
Copper
2.310 kg
Cu, formed
0.593 kg
Al
0.990 kg
Cu, windings
1.300 kg
Glass
0.800 kg
Miscellaneous
1.970 kg
subtotal
28.187 kg
subtotal
9.394 kg
total
37.581 kg
Table 1: Material composition of an average refrigerator
a) Why do many countries and States have laws mandating the recycling of refrigerators? (3 points)
b) Assume that you have to design a completely automated recycling process. How would you separate the
refrigerator’s materials in a completely automated fashion without human disassembly? Focus on the groups
given in the above table only. (7 points)
c) Discuss the pros and cons of using human manual disassembly in this case. (5 points)
d) What is the refrigerators current and technical feasible recyclability (by weight) using the USCAR/VRP rating
scheme? Assume that it is technically feasible to separate the materials. Explain your assumptions and
reasoning. (5 points)
e) Give 10 general Design for Recycling Guidelines and discuss whether they increase or decrease product
manufacture cost. (10 points)
f) Give pros and cons for remanufacturing refrigerators. (5 points)
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4 – LCA of Packaging (30 points)
In the fourth problem, you are asked to examine packaging and transportation environmental impacts using EcoIndicator 99 for the scenario described below.
Scenario:
Auto parts manufactured in Shanghai, China are loaded into cardboard packaging cartons (dimensions 600 mm x
500 mm x 400 mm; the area density of cardboard is
 c  .47
kg
) which are strapped to the centers of pallets with
m2
two perpendicularly intersecting steel bands. The steel bands are 30 mm wide and 1 mm thick, and the density of
steel is
 s  7850
kg
kg
kg
. Wood (pine  pine  520 3 ) and plastic (HDPE  s  949 3 ) pallets are available;
3
m
m
m
both types possess the area dimensions of standard ISO pallets (1200 mm x 1000 mm). The upper deck of the
wooden pallet is formed by five boards (216 mm x 20 mm x 1000 mm); the lower deck is formed by three boards
(246 mm x 30 mm x 1000 mm), and the two are joined by three studs (120 mm high x 50 mm wide x 1200 mm
long). You may ignore fasteners. You may assume that the plastic pallet is injection molded with the same
geometry as the wood pallet.
Once boxed and strapped to the pallets, the auto parts are loaded on to an oceanic freighter bound for San Diego,
California, a journey of approximately 10600 km. The parts are transferred to a train in San Diego; the train travels
roughly 3160 km to Detroit. Shipping vans transfer the parts from a central warehouse to auto manufacturers as
needed. The average trip distance for shipping vans is 50 km.
Questions and Tasks:
a) Using scenario data and the attached Eco-Indicator 99 tables, determine the impact of moving a boxed auto part
from Shanghai to a manufacturer near Detroit on a wooden pallet. (10 points)
b) What is the impact of using a plastic pallet? Based upon your analysis, which pallet would you use? (5 points)
c) Suppose that plastic pallets could be reused, but wooden pallets could not be reused. Now, which would you
choose? Provide quantitative support for your arguments. (3 points)
d) Discuss options, and their pros and cons, for reducing the environmental impacts of packaging in this scenario
(7 points)
e) How would you reduce the transportation impacts? (5 points)
5 – And finally ... (5 points)
Tell us how you are going to use the material from this class in
a) your future classes at Tech (if any) and
b) your professional career.
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