Rice cooker is an essential household appliance for almost every family. Thus the product should be designed ecologically since it’s used heavily, otherwise, it may lead to large ecological impact to our environment. Life Cycle Assessment is used to assess a product’s environmental impacts. This paper presents an LCA study for the complete life cycle of an electric rice cooker with the power 500Watts as the functional unit.
1 Introduction
The whole life cycle of electric rice cooker was divided into four major phases:
• Raw materials acquisition;
• Product manufacturing;
• Product utilization;
• Final disposal.
Some environmental impact data and calculation was cited from other research papers. A special thanks to Zhenghui Sha and Gaurav Ameta for their research paper on similar products, which gave us a lot of help. Most of the data and information was cited from their work. LCA is a very helpful tool to define eco-design measures for this kind of product.
1.1 Background and Scope
The first commercialised electric rice cooker was produced by Mitsubishi Electric Corporation of Japan. Since then, it’s become the most common kitchen appliance, especially in eastern countries, where rice is the staple food for people’s daily life. At present, the data shows that it has reached 100% market penetration for Chinese urban families. At the same time, China is the largest rice cooker manufacturing country of the world, with nearly 60% of the international market share, as of 2006. Such a large number of electric rice cooker produced and disposed every year potentially has impact to the environment.
However, the manufacturing industry mainly focuses on the quality and the cost of the product. “In order to comply with the environmental r...
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...e main factor of environmental impact can be concluded, the heat plate are in the third. Moreover, the fossil fuels aspect shows that the outer pot has large impact to environment.
Figure 5 environmental impact
2. The environmental impact of manufacturing process
Figure 6 specific environmental impact score
The manufacturing process has provided related index number which indicates the relativity of environmental impact to the respect components. Based on such specific output, conclusion and suggestion can be drawn to recognize which is the most significance factor can be optimized. From the figure, the outer pot, power cord and heat plate occupied large ratio of optimising. Based on such specific analysis, designers may conveniently recognise which subassembly is the most significant impact factor so that could make an improvement when design the product.
Our energy needs have significantly changed since the first Industrial Revolution that took place in the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840. Before this time period, our energy needs were modest. For heat, people relied on the energy of the sun, but when it failed them, they burned wood, straw and dried dung. For transportation horses and the power of the wind was used in sails. For agricultural work animals were used to do the jobs that could not be done with man labor. By harnessing the power of steam and wind simple machines could be run to grind our grain and pump our water. The Second Industrial Revolution, also called the Technological Revolution is considered to have begun around the time of the introduction of the Bessemer steel in the 1860s. This technological Revolution is considered as the second phase of the Industrial Revolution that resulted in factory electrification, mass production, the creation of production lines and the development of machine tools. With the appearance of the low cost automobile and the wide spread of electricity our society's energy needs have changed forever. Since the modest beginning of the oil industry in the mid 19th century, petroleum has risen to global dominance leading to mass consumption as the primary fuel to generate electricity, heat, to power our homes, cars and to support economic growth. Unfortunately, as a consequence of industrialization, atmospheric CO2 levels started to rise in proportion to the usage of fossil fuels. This trend raises some concerns about the well being of our environment, and researchers around the world started to look for alternative, cle...
The first metric will focus on their understanding how well their global factories are adapting to a more energy efficient system and determine whether or not the steps they are taking are adequate enough to determine success or failure. The second metric is focused on understanding their product’s ecological and environmental impact; essentially determining what type of waste is left through manufacturing and selling their products. It is with the understanding that the manufacturing of goods is not the end of the process, but rather the start of a full cycle of creating a sustainable company. The last metric is focused on employee participation, their
National Center for Manufacturing Sciences. (2004, August 11). Environmental Roadmapping Initiative. Retrieved October 14, 2011, from Plastics Impacts, Risks and Regulations: http://ecm.ncms.org/ERI/new/IRRPlastics.htm
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Factory farming is also one of the main causes of greenhouse gases emission. According to a research, the ...
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One of the world 's biggest markets, China is currently facing serious issues on air pollution affected by overflowing numbers of factories in the cities such as Beijing. The factories are often forced to close down whenever the government issues a level-four red alert in which is the most serious of a four-tier warning system. This alert not only gives inconvenience to the public but it is also a serious loss to the manufacturer since they have a risk of not meeting the release date. In consequences, there is a growing tendency among Chinese companies who are willing to intake sustainable marketing and design strategies that would decrease the environmental impact and create high-end products for the
Tukker, A & Jansen, B 2006, ‘Environmental impacts of products – a detailed review of studies’, Journal of Industrial Ecology, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 159–182.
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