RESOURCE OPTIMIZATION AND SUSTAINABLE MANUFACTURING IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF A SELF-CHILLING BEVERAGE CAN

摘要

Every year in Europe more than 30Mt of C02e are emitted from retail refrigerators (Cowan et al., 2010). This is due to the leakages of HFC and HCFC that have adverse impacts on climate change not only because they are powerful greenhouse gases, but also because leaking systems are less energy efficient (Bovea et al., 2007; Cowan et al., 2010). Both the energy consumption worldwide and the high emissions of greenhouse gases have directed interest to alternative solutions to conventional refrigeration systems. To this end, a new technology has been designed to supply cooled products on demand using the cooling effect provided by the endothermic desorption of carbon dioxide previously adsorbed onto a bed of activated carbon. The principles of life cycle engineering have been utilized to evaluate the overall environmental performance of one possible application of this technology: a self-chilling beverage container with a steel outer can to contain the beverage and an inner aluminium can to contain the adsorbent. All the life cycle stages of this product have been considered to develop a delivery and use system manufacturing process with reduced life cycle impacts, including manufacturing of all parts of the beverage container (activated carbon, aluminium, steel), utilization of industrial waste gas (CO2), use, recovery of the used can, and management of the waste by reuse, recycling and landfilling.