Life Cycle Environmental And Economic Assessment Of Typical Recycled Paper Products

As the pulp and paper industry has rapidly developed in recent years.China has become the world's largest paper and board producer and the largest waste paper recycling country.With the program of forest conservation,wastepaper has become the main material for the pulp and paper sector.This study basing on practical production of Chinese paper-making companies applied life cycle assessment(LCA)and life cycle costing(LCC)methods to conduct LCA-combined LCC analyses for four kinds of typical recovered paper products.Data collected on-site were used to compile the life cycle inventory,then life cycle assessment analyses were conducted at the mid-point level,including the normalization analysis and the characteristic analysis.to quantity the overall potential environmental impact and identify the key factors which caused the environmental impact.The sensitive analysis was conducted for the major processes that have high environmental impact,and the uncertainty analysis was conducted for comparison the four wastepaper recycling scenarios.Results show that the main categories were global warming.terrestrial acidification.respiratory inorganics,respiratory organics,water depletion,metal depletion,fossil depletion and carcinogens.Carbon dioxide emitted into the air is a key substance to global warming;sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides emitted into the air are key factors to terrestrial acidification and respiratory organics;particulate matter emissions is a key substance to respiratory inorganics;coal consumption is a key substance in fossil depletion;and chromium emitted into water impacts carcinogens.Results of process analysis show that electricity and steam consumption are the most important contributor to the overall environmental impact,and the cost of wastepaper contributed considerably to the economic burden.In addition,the consumption of chemicals and purchased wood pulp is responsible to the potential environmental impact.The uncertainty analysis show that the corrugated board scenario is the best option with the lowest environmental impact and low economic burden.By contrast.the supercalendered paper scenario has the highest potential environmental impact and high economic impact.The life cycle cost of the four recycled paper products ranges from 3568 RMB/t to 6280 RMB/t.with the net profit ranges from 602.9 RMB/t to 1056 RMB/t.Controlling waste paper purchase costs.improving energy use efficiency,reducing energy consumption,and optimizing power composition,and improving energy recovery can effectively reduce the potential environmental impact and economic burden.Meanwhile,reducing the use of chemicals in the pulp and papermaking process,and enhancing chemicals recovery rate can increase potential environmental and economic benefits,achieving a win-win situation at both economic and environmental perspectives.