Análise de ciclo de vida de produção de autoclaves em empresa de biossegurança

Abstract

The growing environmental awareness of the population and businesses is related to major environmental degradation caused by the exponential increase of industries in the last decades. This fact has caused organizations to optimize their processes and minimize its adverse effects on the environment. Thus, there was the appearance of several management tools in pursuit of sustainable development. Among them, there is the ISO 14000 series of standards and the subject of this study, the ISO 14040, which aims to quantify the environmental impacts during the life cycle of a product. This study analyzed and applied the organizational requirements of the analysis tool of the product life cycle (LCA), based on EN ISO 14040: 2006 for a biosafety equipment industry. To achieve this goal, it was necessary to quantify the input and output flows of raw materials in the production of an autoclave in a small / medium sized bio-security company in Campo Mourao / PR. The information was obtained through visits, application of questionnaires and direct observations, followed by the use as input to a computer program with extensive database to quantify the direct and indirect environmental impacts for each unit produced, in order to draw up the inventory cycle life of the product. Then the impacts and environmental aspects were evaluated, where significant ones include the decrease of water resources and natural resources, as well as decrease of life-spam of landfills, due to the amount of raw material used and consumed water. Thus, the results were analyzed and quantified the impacts for two system boundary models: the "gate to gate" and the "cradle to cradle", highlighting the global warming potential, caused by indirect atmospheric emissions from the electricity use and depletion of water resources due to water consumption. In the life cycle assessment within the company, the value of 26 thousand tons of indirect effluent were obtained due to extraction steps and production of energy and raw materials outside the company, in addition to 546 tons of atmospheric emissions in the same way. When comparing these values with a life cycle including recycling and reuse of steel in production chain, there is a possible decrease of 6 thousand tons of effluents and 100 tons of air emissions. In general, the use of electric energy and water consumption indicators were the most damaging to the environment. Thus, mitigation measures have been suggested, sucha as consumption reduction targets and use of recycled materials, if possible.