Case Studies in Construction Materials (Jul 2024)
Environmental impact assessment of melamine coated medium density fiberboard (MDF-LAM) production and cumulative energy demand: A case study in Türkiye
Abstract
Melamine-coated medium density fibreboard (MDF-LAM) is widely used in the construction industry, furniture industry and other structural applications due to its easy processing, low cost, high strength and high dimensional stability. In this study, the effects of MDF on the environment throughout its life cycle were determined by the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method. For this purpose, it presents the results of a research conducted to evaluate the environmental impacts and identify hot spots of MDF-LAM production in Türkiye using the LCA method, considering a cradle-to-gate system. The MDF-LAM production process is studied in four subsystems: fibre preparation, board forming, finishing and lamination (LAM). In the analysis of the environmental effects of MDF-LAM, detailed data were obtained from a company producing in Türkiye. In this study, the functional unit is “1 m3 MDF-LAM production in Türkiye”. The environmental impacts of MDF-LAM were estimated in SimaPro 9.1 software using the Ecoinvent database v3.5 with CML-IA impact assessment and Cumulative Energy Demand (CED) methods. Various impact categories were considered in the analysis, such as global warming, acidification, eutrophication, water use, fossil fuels, human toxicity and cumulative energy demand. The analysis results show that the fiber preparation stage is the main hotspot in terms of environmental impacts and emissions. And shows that this is followed by the lamination step. It has been determined that urea formaldehyde (UF) resin, which is used as a synthetic adhesive, has the largest share in the environmental effects of MDF-LAM production. In this study, CED was evaluated as another impact category. This evaluation result showed that the fiber preparation subsystem had a higher CED than the other stages. In addition, it was determined that renewable biomass and non-renewable fossil were the most affected categories, while UF resin use and electricity consumption were the most important hot spots in terms of non-renewable and renewable resources.
