Remanufacturing and energy savings

The substantial growth in industrial production, demand for materials, and population has led to an increasing need for sustainable manufacturing processes to mitigate the negative impacts on the environment and meet the needs of future generations. One proposed direction is remanufacturing, which is a process whereby used products having reached their end-of-life, are restored back to useful service-life. Remanufacturing utilizes the energy and embedded value retained in a product upon reaching end-of-life. Remanufacturing can close the loop between disposal and supply chains, extend the service lifetime of products, conserve resources, and help mitigate environmental consequences attributed to landfilling. Moreover, by preserving the geometrical architecture of cores, remanufacturing can reduce the needs for raw material processing and many manufacturing processes, hence, saving energy. A critical issue to consider when evaluating energy savings in remanufacturing is the product use phase: how well does the remanufactured device perform in the use phase compared to a similar new product from an energy standpoint? To answer this question, we utilize Life Cycle Assessments framework. Using this methodology, we quantify cumulative energy demands of a remanufactured product during its lifecycle and compare it to an equivalent new product. We conduct an analysis of lifecycle energy savings of remanufacturing for 19 different products in 8 distinct product case studies (4 product case studies discussed in detail in this thesis).

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2010

Author dc:creator

• Boustani, Avid

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Stephen C. Graves and Timothy G. Gutowski.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/58461

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/58461