Page 165 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

3.7 Illustration of the Inventory Phase by an Example 149

Material/product Data basis

from the T ¨ UV Rhineland. All factors consider appropriate vehicle mix
and if necessary the proportion of accountable driven distance
Sorting plant The data bases for sorting plant is based on DSD researches. Besides,
general prerequisites concerning the type of sorting plant are
distinguished if known (e.g. manual sorting, semi-automatic sorting,
etc.)
A part of collected transparent PET bottles as well as the majority of
coloured, non-transparent bottles are retrieved as mixed plastic in the
sorting plant. In a subsequent treatment it is first cut up, cleaned by air
classification and melted in a thermal reactor (agglomerator) and
pelleted. The energy consumption was set to be 1.188 MJ t −1 input
b
c
The data go back to those of the and are identical to those of a plant
operator which were made available to the contractors
Since a dry processing is concerned, no direct waste water is released.
Data to exhaust air or waste water emissions were not available
a INFRAS, 2004.
b
UBA, 2001.
c DKR (DKR:German: Deutsche Gesellschaft f¨ ur Kunstoff Recycling mbH German society for
plastic recycling ltd.).

3.7.2.5 Recovery Technologies (Recycling)
Quite an effort might be necessary for the data acquisition of recovery/recycling
processes, if different technologies at different locations with realistic mass flows
have to be considered and no generic data are published. In many cases it is
necessary to procure data from the industry. These data often must be treated
confidentially, that is, they may be used for the inventory calculation of an LCA,
but not explicitly be published as data records. The handling of confidential data is
a very sensitive area in LCA (see also Section 5.5).

Recycling of Used Beverage Cartons
Following sorting, beverage cartons are present as material fraction. The
composite material is then processed in two German and one Finnish
plants.
The German locations transfer rejects for recovery in cement plants. There
the PE portion serves as fuel for the replacement of hard coal, and aluminium
serves as replacement for the aggregate bauxite.
Twenty percentage of composite carton collected in Germany was recov-
ered in the Finnish plant in the year 2005. There the reject is used in the
nearby Ecogas plant.