Use of an energy-saving concept to assess life-cycle impact in engineering

摘要

Energy and environmental issues are worldwide concerns in the 21st century. The authors propose that the best way to solve the energy-use problem is to account for all of a product's energy consumption information at the beginning of product design. Therefore, with the objective to promote energy-saving throughout the entire life cycle of general products or systems, the authors develop a new product design method by integrating the engineering design theory and two new concepts. A case study based on a typical energy-consuming product, a commercial hair dryer, will be presented in the paper for demonstrating the new design concept.