Environmental emissions and energy consumptions assessment of a diesel engine from the life cycle perspective

As environmental awareness increases, industries and businesses are becoming concerned about the issues of natural resource depletion and environmental degradation. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) enables the estimation of the potential materials and energy resources required for and the environmental emissions resulting from activities in our economy. The present study intends to quantify the energy consumption and environmental emissions in the entire life cycle of a newly manufactured diesel engine produced in a Chinese factory and to determine the stage with the largest environmental impact. Quantitative results of environmental impact indicators for each unit process in the life cycle and of a diesel engine are achieved by the LCA method using the Chinese core life cycle database. Logarithmic processing is conducted in order to normalize the result to a more tractable range. The results show that Primary Energy Demand, Global Warming Potential and Photochemical Ozone Formation Potential are three predominant impacts along with the entire life cycle of the diesel engine, which account for 50.37%, 19.47% and 17.54% of total impacts, respectively. The usage process in the engine life cycle consumes the maximum energy and brings about the largest environmental impacts, followed by raw material acquisition and components manufacturing.