Definition of a reference dataset for life cycle consideration of refrigeration systems

Abstract

In recent decades society has increased its concern about environmental protection, in order to achieve the goal of sustainable development. However, there are several economic sectors like refrigeration industry, which still are cause for a wide number of environmental impacts and, therefore, require improvement in their processes. The purpose of this final work is to establish the current state of the art regarding Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC), particularized to their applicability to household refrigerators. In order to accomplish this, first a bibliographical research has been carried out to find the published literature on the subject to recent date. Finally, a quantitatively and qualitatively reference dataset of the publications recovered from the research has been done. The elaboration of the work has not been free of limitations, since there have been restriction on access to scientific articles. So, the objective is to generate and analyse a base of environmental and economic criteria to support and help producers of refrigerators in the manufacture and production of the same. Starting from the theoretical definition of these different methodologies (LCA, LCC), it is followed by the state of the art in the refrigeration industry, trying to analyse the optimization practices proposed by the many authors (also experts) both in environmental and economic terms that are used to assess a product sustainable. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a useful tool in environmental design alternative solutions, searching to reduce potential impacts and orient to the pursuit of sustainable development, followed by the economic assessment through the method of Life Cycle Costing (LCC). Results of the analysis help in identifying which are the most named environmental and economic impacts of a household refrigerator during its process. Moreover, this analysis of the State Of The Art (SOTA) it will be a reference dataset to assess the environmental and economic impacts for future sustainable refrigerator.