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life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the Oxidative Unhairing Process by Hydrogen Peroxide

2008; American Leather Chemists Association; Volume: 103; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

0002-9726

Domenico Castiello, Monica Puccini, Maurizia Seggiani, Sandra Vitolo, Francesco Zammori,

Chemistry and Chemical Engineering

The ever increasing attention to the environmental impact of the process industry imposes an obligation to constantly improve the global sustainability of the tanning process. Among the numerous phases of the tanning process, the beamhouse accounts for most of the total polluting charge, due to the use of sodium sulfide and lime during the manufacturing process of hides. Hence, the authors have recently developed an alternative unhairing process that eliminates the use of sulfides. The actual reduction of the environmental impact of this process, in relation with the traditional one, was evaluated performing a Life Cycle Assesment (LCA) using SimaPro 6, one of the most used software for LCA analysis. Environmental impacts were finally rated using “EDIP 97” assessing methodology. Since impact assessment methodologies were mainly developed for the manufacturing field, EDIP 97 was slightly modified and adapted to fit with the tannery industry. Resumen La siempre creciente atencion prestada al impacto ambiental en la industria de transformacion impone la obligacion de crear una mejora continua en la sostenibilidad global del proceso de curticion.Entre las numerosas fases de la curticion, la ribera genera la mayoria de la carga contaminante total, debido a uso del sulfuro de sodio y cal durante el proceso de manufactura de pieles. Tal cual entonces, los autores han recientemente desarrollado un proceso alternativo de apelambrar que elimina el empleo de sulfuros. La real merma del impacto ambiental debido a este proceso comparado con el tradicional, se evaluo por medio del Cateo del Ciclo de Vida (LCA) utilizando SigmaPro 6, uno de los mas empleados softwares en el analisis LCA. Impactos ambientales fueron finalmente valorados por uso de la metodologia de valoracion “EDIP 97”. Como las metodologias de valoracion del impacto ambiental fueron desarrolladas principalmente para el ramo de la manufactura, EDIP 97 se modifico ligeramente y se adapto para cuadrarse a la industria curtidora.