Life Cycle Assessment on End-of-Life Vehicle Treatment System in Korea

This study aims at evaluating the environmental impacts stemmed from End-of-Life Vehicle (ELV) treatment system in Korea, using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method. In the process of the assessment, not only the environmental burdens originated from ELV dismantling processes and recycling processes but also the environment benefits obtained from the avoided effects of recycled materials on the environmental impacts associated with virgin materials are considered. The significant issues which are defined as the environmental aspects that contribute more than 1 % to the total environmental impacts in each impact category are identified from the Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA). From the Life Cycle Inventory Analysis (LCI) and LCIA studies, it is shown that the significant environmental aspects are associated with recycling processes of ferrous metals, shredding processes of compressed car bodies and recycling processes of end-of-life engines. In particular, the recycling processes of ferrous metals appear to have the most significant environmental impacts in the ELV treatment system. Thus, it is required to improve the recycling processes of ferrous metals in order to make the current ELV treatment system more environmentally sound. This study also deals with ELV treatment scenarios as follows; reference is the current ELV treatment system with 78 % of recycling rate, Scenario I takes into account of both the recycling of the additional automotive parts (85 % recycling rate) and the collection of refrigerants, and Scenario II assumes energy recovery as well as 95 % of recycling rate. It is found that scenario II has better ecological profiles than the others in the environmental impact categories such as Abiotic Resource Depletion (ARD), Global Warming (GW), Ozone Depletion (OD), Photochemical Oxidant Creation (POC), Eutrophication (EU) and Human Toxicity (HT).