Life Cycle Assessment of the IXIO-D ARTEK for BEA Sensors

Abstract

Faced with climate urgency, ever-increasing pollution, and a growing depletion of non-renewable resources, the industrial sector, including companies, has the duty to act. BEA Sensors, the world leader in detection technologies for automatic doors, is involved in this issue, pursuing two main objectives. The first is to offer to its customers a complete and transparent view of the environmental impact of their products. The second is to identify the opportunities for future improvements in their designs. In practice, an assessment of environmental impacts is carried out through Life Cycle Assessment, the only scientific method that provides a complete, transparent, and quantified view of the environmental impacts associated with a system. The system is studied throughout its entire life cycle, from "cradle to grave", taking into account a range of environmental criteria. As part of this master thesis, the Life Cycle Assessment was applied to BEA Sensors’ best-seller: the IXIO-D ARTEK, a motion sensor for opening and securing automatic sliding doors. The results obtained were intended to generate an Environmental Product Declaration in accordance with European standard EN 15804 + A2 and to introduce an ecodesign approach to the sensor. The results were obtained using SimaPro 9.6.0.1 software, which integrates the ecoinvent 3.10 and Industry Data 2.0 databases, as well as the European Commission’s Environmental Footprint 3.1 methods, which cover 16 impact categories. As a result of the assessment, it was estimated that during its life cycle, an ARTEK IXIO-D emits the equivalent of 48.5 kg of CO2, including 41.7% during the product stage and 57.9% during the use stage. These two stages are the key stages of the system. Within the product stage, it has been shown that raw materials contribute most to the environmental impact. For the use stage, it is electricity consumption linked to use that is the major contributor. In addition to the Climate change category, expressed in terms of CO2 eq emissions, three other impacts have been highlighted by normalisation of the indicators with to the global reference of 2010: the Resource use, minerals and metals, the Resource use, fossils, and the Acidification. Finally, two sensitivity analyses were carried out on the system. The first highlighted the influence of the electrical mix supplying the sensor, revealing significant differences in environmental impact depending on the geographical area of use. The second was part of an ecodesign approach applied to a real case of product improvement. The latter showed that reducing the weight of required electronic components, relocating production from China to Belgium, and improving the energy performance of the sensor would reduce its environmental impact. In concrete terms, a 26% reduction in equivalent CO2 emissions was observed in the contribution to Climate change, between the two designs. In addition, the calculation of a single score, based on the normalisation and the weighting of the impacts, revealed a 13.7% reduction between the two scenarios, suggesting a lower environmental impact.