Life Cycle Assessment of Composite Shipping Container Floors compared to Conventional Wood Flooring

摘要

This Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study demonstrates the value of composite floors in ocean container shipping units, where the lighter weight and durability of composites compared to conventional bamboo-wood and plywood floors result in reduced energy use and a smaller carbon footprint. The study covered the entire life cycle of the floor types in making this comparison, from raw materials extraction to floor manufacturing, transportation between life cycle phases, use in transport on container ships and trucks, floor maintenance and end-of-life. The study included container ships with 6,000 and 12,000 TEU capacities, where a TEU is "20- foot equivalent unit". Regarding energy, based on average life time and transportation distance scenarios for a 6,000 TEU ship, the composite floor saves 74.5 gigajoules (GJ or billion joules) per TEU versus the bamboo-wood floor. Regarding carbon footprint when compared to the bamboo-wood floor under the same scenarios, the composite floor avoids 4.7 metric tons of CO_2-equivalents per TEU. Comparing an entire 6,000 TEU container ship with composite versus bamboo-wood flooring, the total greenhouse gases (GHGs) avoided amount to 28,200,000 kg of CO_2-equivalents. As expected the life cycle energy savings and GHGs avoided are relatively lower for a 12,000 versus a 6,000 TEU ship, as the larger capacity ship is more efficient in using less fuel allocated over twice as many containers. Nevertheless, a 12,000 TEU ship with composite flooring versus the bamboo/wood floor saves 57.2 GJ/TEU and avoids 3.4 metric tons CO_2-eq/TEU.