A GHG emissions analysis method for product remanufacturing: A case study on a diesel engine

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.09.200

Journal of Cleaner Production

Volume 206, 1 January 2019, Pages 955-965

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.09.200 Get rights and content

Highlights

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A GHG emissions analysis method for product remanufacturing based on Petri net is proposed.
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The system boundary of GHG emission for product remanufacturing is determined.
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The dynamical characteristics of GHG emissions for products remanufacturing are analyzed.
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GHG emissions in different remanufacturing process are analyzed quantitatively based on two types of GHG emission source.

Abstract

Environmental change has become the most serious global problem in recent years. The increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emission is one of the consequences of environmental change. Remanufacturing of waste products constitutes a good production practice destined for environment protection. Nevertheless, GHG emissions are inevitably generated in the remanufacturing process. This study provides an insight into the characteristics of GHG emissions associated with product remanufacturing and presents a new analysis method for GHG emissions based on the Petri net, thus introducing a new theoretical concept for cleaner production of used products. In this method, the boundary of the GHG emission for product remanufacturing is defined, the dynamic characteristics of GHG emissions are analyzed, and the GHG emission analysis model is set up based on the Petri net. Based on this method, the GHG emissions in each remanufacturing process can be quantitatively analyzed. Accordingly, suggestions for energy conservation and GHG emission reduction are proposed. A WD615.87 diesel engine remanufacturing paradigm is presented as a case study throughout the text, whereby elicited results showed that the proposed method is effective in the analysis of GHG emissions for product remanufacturing.

Introduction

The high-speed development of the manufacturing industry has led to the unprecedented attention to the greenhouse effect (Friedlingstein et al. (2014)). “Remanufacturing” is considered as a suitable end-of-life strategy that can help reduce the overall environmental emissions by processing waste materials while maintaining high quality (Kumar et al., 2007, Steinhilper, 1998). In China, remanufacturing has been extensively used in automobile engines, machine tools, and agricultural machinery (Wei et al., 2015). Nonetheless, GHG emissions are inevitable in the remanufacturing process. In fact, to-this-date, based on the entire life cycle, product remanufacturing has not achieved the desired CO₂ emission reduction target (Zhang and Chen, 2015). Compared to traditional manufacturing, remanufacturing employs used products as work blanks, whereby the damage conditions of used parts are not the same. This also implies that the remanufacturing process exhibits differences owing to the disparities of the damage conditions of used parts. Consequently, the GHG emissions are associated with increased uncertainty and dynamics. The typical product remanufacturing process includes recovery, disassembly, cleaning, testing, repairing, and assembling (Guide and Daniel, 2000), and produces considerable amounts of dust and waste gas during these processes, especially in the disassembly and cleaning processes, which involve increased amounts of GHG emissions. However, owing to the uncertainty of the damage condition of the used products and the dynamics of the remanufacturing process, it is difficult to analyze the GHG emissions of product remanufacturing. The quantitative and exact analysis of the GHG emissions of product remanufacturing is a practical and significant research topic aiming towards additional energy conservation and GHG emission reduction.

Engine remanufacturing has been proved to be associated with increased economic value and environmental benefits (Liu et al., 2013, Shi et al., 2015a, Shi et al., 2015b). Many research studies have been conducted, and have extensively analyzed GHG emissions in the special case of automobile engine remanufacturing. Specifically, Shi et al. (2015a) and Liu et al. (2014) compared the environmental impact categories of the newly manufactured and remanufactured WD615 diesel engine during its life cycle, and the elicited results showed that engine remanufacturing would reduce at least 30.5% CO₂ compared to the manufacturing of a new engine. Afrinaldia et al. (2017) compared the eco-efficiency of a newly manufactured engine cylinder block and a remanufactured engine cylinder block, and global warming potentials (GWPs) of the cylinder blocks were considered and measured. Liu et al. (2016) studied the environmental impact of the remanufacturing of the engine's cylinder based on laser cladding and compared it with a newly manufactured product based on the life cycle assessment (LCA) method. The results revealed that the engine cylinder remanufacturing will achieve large environmental benefits, and the emissions of CO and CO₂ can be reduced by more than 50%. Smith and Keoleian (2004) have employed life cycle methodologies to demonstrate that remanufactured engines could produce 73%–87% fewer CO₂ emissions compared to original product manufacturing. Dias et al. (2013) also reported that there were 74% reductions in CO₂ emissions from the remanufacturing of a diesel engine. Kim et al. (2008) provided some description of the current automotive remanufacturing in the categories of GHG emissions and energy consumption. Conducted research on the environmental benefits of engine remanufacturing in earlier studies by Seitz and Wells, 2006, Seitz, 2007 provided in-depth insights into the engine remanufacturing from the aspects of the driving forces and motivations behind product take-back and recovery. Specifically, these publications provided data and theoretical guidance for follow-up research on this topic.

Carbon oxide is one of the main components of greenhouse gases, and represents the research-related carbon footprint for product remanufacturing in recent days. Kara (2009) summarized the method and outputs from a short cut “carbon footprint” of a remanufactured cutting tool compared to a new cutting tool. Wang et al. (2018) characterized the optimal carbon tax based on a two-period production decision model in which new and remanufactured products were clearly distinguishable. Tornese et al. (2016) characterized the carbon equivalent emissions for pallet remanufacturing operations in two repositioning scenarios, namely cross docking, and take-back. Chang et al. (2017) developed two models to compare and evaluate the effectiveness to motivate the manufacturer to adopt low-carbon remanufacturing practices in two periods. Yin et al. (2012) established the system boundary of carbon flow to analyze the dynamic characteristics.

GHG emission analyses methods have also been explored from different aspects and levels. For instance, Petri nets constitute an important tool that is used in GHG emission analyses based on which Li et al. (2012) constructed a carbon emission model for machine tool manufacturing, while Cao and Li, (2014) proposed a simulation approach for displaying carbon emission dynamics. In terms of other methods, Teh et al. (2017) proposed a quantified analysis method for carbon footprint intensity, and Zouadi et al. (2016) proposed a mathematical model for a multi sourcing lot-sizing problem for flow lines with returns during carbon emission. In turn, Esteves et al. (2017) presented a method to evaluate annually the environmental performance of GHG emissions, while Bazan et al. (2015) developed a “traditional” reverse logistics model by considering the energy and GHG emissions used from manufacturing, remanufacturing, and transportation activities. Turki et al. (2018) proposed a manufacturing/remanufacturing system by addressing the issues of manufacturing, remanufacturing, and storage decisions in accordance to industrial constraints of carbon emission regulations. Yenipazarli (2016) characterized the manufacturer's decision to remanufacturing based on GHG emission regulations. Bazan et al. (2017) presented two models for a two-level closed-loop supply chain by considering the energy consumption, GHG emissions, and transportation activities.

Based on the literature, considerable achievements have been accomplished on GHG emissions for product remanufacturing, however, most of the GHG emission analyses research efforts have always been involved in the entire environmental benefit analysis. Additionally, special, in-depth studies of GHG emissions have been rarely conducted and not on a systematic basis, and in view of the uncertainty and dynamics involved, extensive analyses of the GHG emission characteristics of the remanufacturing process have been lacking. Accordingly, the greenhouse effect cannot be understood in-depth in the remanufacturing process. Therefore, it is necessary to explore a quantitative GHG emission analysis method for product remanufacturing for further energy conservation and emission reduction. In this study, a GHG emission analysis method for product remanufacturing based on the Petri net is developed based on the research of Li et al. (2012).

The Petri net is a visual and qualitative analysis tool that is consisted of a continuous variable and a discrete event dynamic system, and is extensively used in manufacturing modeling and analysis. The advantages of the organizational structure and dynamic behavior allow the Petri net to describe the dynamic GHG emissions clearly by analyzing the dynamic situation of material flow, energy flow, and waste streams in the product remanufacturing process. Therefore, in this research, the Petri net is introduced to the GHG emission analysis method as part of the product remanufacturing process. In this GHG emission analysis method, the GHG emission boundary of the remanufacturing is defined, the dynamic characteristics of GHG emissions are analyzed, and the GHG emission analysis model is set up based on the Petri net, thus allowing the quantitative analysis of the GHG emissions in each remanufacturing process.

The remanufacturing of a WD615.87 Steyr diesel engine is used as a case study paradigm throughout the text to illustrate the validity and practicality of the proposed method. The WD615.87 Steyr diesel engine was remanufactured by Jinan Fuqiang Power Co. Ltd., was used for five years, and travelled 300,000 km, as shown in Fig. 1. The WD615 series Steyr diesel engine is currently a mature remanufacturing product in China, has a high-economic value, and is environment friendly. Correspondingly, 80% of the used WD615 series Steyr diesel engines will be recycled for remanufacturing in China.

Section snippets

GHG emission characteristic analysis of engine remanufacturing

GHG refers to the atmospheric gases that can absorb the solar radiation reflected by the ground that can in turn release some additional gases. The main components of GHG include CO₂, CO, NO_x, and CH₄, and these gases can warm the Earth's surface. The contribution of each gas to the potential greenhouse effect varies. The equivalent factor was used to calculate the potential value of the greenhouse effect, that is, one of the gases is used as a benchmark according to the degree of its influence

Definition of Petri net

Petri net in the remanufacturing process is defined as follows. Place and transition (P/T) system: The P/T system is a six-element group expressed as Σ (P, T, F, K, W, M₀), and the elements are defined as follows (Bartoletti et al., 2015, Baldan et al., 2010):

(1)
P, T, and F are nets, where P denotes the place, T denotes the transition, and F denotes the flow
(2)
$K : P \to N^{+} \cup {\infty}$ is a capacity function
(3)
$W : F \to N^{+}$ is a flow function, where $F = (P \times T) \cup (T \times P)$ , and flow only exists in the elements of P and T
(4)
$M_{0} : P \to N$ is the

Result analysis

The GHG emissions in different remanufacturing processes are shown in Table 11 and Fig. 4, and the comparison of GHG emissions generated by resource consumption and waste discharge and disposal are shown in Fig. 5 and Fig. 6).

(1)
GHG emissions in each engine remanufacturing process

Table 11 and Fig. 4 reveal that most of the GHG emissions are generated in the repairing process (41.63% of the total GHG emissions), followed by those in the cleaning process (32.22% of the total GHG emissions), and the

Conclusions

Owing to the uncertainty and dynamics for used product remanufacturing, it is difficult to analyze the GHG emissions quantitatively. Thus, this study presented a quantitative GHG emission analysis method based on the Petri net, and the GHG emission analysis for a WD615.87 diesel engine remanufacturing was conducted as a paradigm case throughout the text. In this method, the GHG emission boundary was initially determined, and the GHG emission characteristics were then analyzed, the GHG emission

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of Jinan Fuqiang power Co., LTD and Liaoning Province Natural Science Fund Guidance Project (Energy efficiency, emissions and environmental impact model research of equipment remanufacturing system, No. 20170540080).

The authors would like to thank the editor and reviewers for their constructive suggestions of the paper.

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A GHG emissions analysis method for product remanufacturing: A case study on a diesel engine

Highlights

Abstract

Introduction

Section snippets

GHG emission characteristic analysis of engine remanufacturing

Definition of Petri net

Result analysis

Conclusions

Acknowledgments

Sci. Comput. Program.

Int. J. Prod. Econ.

J. Clean. Prod.

J. Clean. Prod.

J. Clean. Prod.

J. Oper. Manag.

J. Clean. Prod.

Procedia CIRP

J. Clean. Prod.

J. Clean. Prod.

J. Clean. Prod.

J. Clean. Prod.

J. Clean. Prod.

J. Clean. Prod.

Eur. J. Oper. Res.

J. Clean. Prod.

IFAC Pap. Online