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Comparative life cycle assessment of fired brick production in Thailand

  • PROMOTING SUSTAINABILITY IN EMERGING ECONOMIES VIA LIFE CYCLE THINKING
  • Published:
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Abstract

Purpose

Fired bricks are an essential construction material in Thailand where the majority of fired brick kilns use rice husk as feedstock. Given the increasing demand of rice husk from other industries, alternative feedstocks are needed for future fired brick production. This life cycle assessment (LCA) study investigates the environmental burden of Thai brick production using different biomass types.

Methods

Three biomass fuels for fired brick production were compared: cane leaves, rice straw, and rice husk. Both the attributional and consequential modeling approaches were applied. Separated inventories were compiled using different databases: ecoinvent v. 3 and the Thai National Life Cycle Inventory (TH-LCI). Overall, this study includes a total of nine scenarios, for which characterized results were calculated using the Stepwise method. Differences in biomass scenario, modeling approach, and database used were tested via analysis of variance using four distinct fired brick production plants as replications.

Results and discussion

Overall, using cane leaves and rice straw gives lower impacts than using rice husk. The largest burden for cane leaves and rice straw scenarios comes from the burning process, while using electricity and using fertilizers for rice cultivation were the most contributors for rice husk scenario. However, different modeling approaches yield mostly significantly different results and the consequential results were lower than the attributional ones. Regarding database choice in attributional modeling approach, results were lower when using TH-LCI compared with ecoinvent.

Conclusions

Using cane leaves and rice straw as fuels in fired brick production are better scenarios than using rice husk. Nevertheless, factors related to season, size, and collection effort should be considered in the large-scale use of these biomasses. For database choice, ecoinvent is currently recommended over TH-LCI despite the higher geographical representativeness of the latter.

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Acknowledgments

The researchers would like to express deep gratitude to the Thailand Research Fund through the Royal Golden Jubilee Ph.D. Program (Grant No. PHD/0175/2553) for the financial support, without which this research work would not have materialized. The authors would like to thank Dr. Saowapha Chaipitak (Kasetsart University, Thailand) for the statistic advises, and Prof. Per Christensen (Aalborg University, Denmark) for his contribution to the initial study design. Also, the authors thank the Thai National Life Cycle Inventory Database under the National Metal and Materials Technology Center (MTEC) for the database support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Kasetsart University, Bangkok, 10900, Thailand

    Rutjaya Prateep Na Talang & Sanya Sirivithayapakorn

  2. Department of Development and Planning, Aalborg University, Aalborg, 9000, Denmark

    Massimo Pizzol

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  1. Rutjaya Prateep Na Talang
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Correspondence to Sanya Sirivithayapakorn.

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Responsible editor: Shabbir Gheewala

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Prateep Na Talang, R., Pizzol, M. & Sirivithayapakorn, S. Comparative life cycle assessment of fired brick production in Thailand. Int J Life Cycle Assess 22, 1875–1891 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-016-1197-3

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