A Comparative Life Cycle Assessment of Alternative Polymers to Poly(vinyl chloride) for Use in Flooring Applications

Abstract

Poly(vinyl chloride) has a long history of use in the flooring industry. Throughout the years, several environmental and health issues have arisen concerning the production, usage and disposal of PVC. Forbo Flooring Systems is a company striving to provide environmentally friendly products for their customers, and therefore has an investigation of alternative polymers to PVC been initiated. The aim of this study is to investigate the environmental effects of the production of alternative polymers to PVC. The study consists of two main parts:

• A literature research in which potential alternative polymers were selected for further investigation based on qualities required in flooring applications.
• A life cycle assessment where the alternative polymers environmental impacts were evaluated using S-PVC as benchmark.

In the literature study, four alternative polymers were found: modified poly(phenylene ether) (mPPE), epoxidized linseed oil (ELO), ethylene methacrylic acid (EMAA) and ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA). The LCA results showed that PVC had the lowest environmental impact of the five different polymers. In the LCA study a dominance and a sensitivity analysis were also performed. The results of the dominance analysis were applied in the sensitivity analysis to evaluate the influence of the origin of the raw material and the energy. The sensitivity analysis revealed that the exchange of fossil-based to bio-based raw materials decreased the global warming potential of the polymer production but had an increase in other impact categories. It also determined that the exchange of generic European to Swedish electricity had a positive effect on the environment. The conclusion was reached that the production of PVC has a lower environmental impact than the investigated polymers. However, when bio-based raw materials and Swedish electricity was used for mPPE (PS), EMAA and EVA, the GWP was lower than for PVC. This indicates that the polymers have the potential to be an environmentally preferable alternative to PVC.

Popular Abstract

PVC: an environmental villain or a “green” solution?
PVC has long had a bad reputation of being toxic to humans and to the environment. It has been called “the poison plastic” and “the most environmentally damaging of all plastics”. In this Master thesis it is revealed that PVC is in many ways, the most environmentally friendly alternative among the studied plastics.

PVC is a very common plastic used in many different applications. One of them is flooring systems, often referred to as vinyl flooring. Because of the bad reputation of PVC, an increasing demand for PVC-free plastic floorings has been noted. The flooring company Forbo Flooring Systems has therefore initiated this study. The aim of the study was to investigate other plastics that has a potential to be used in floorings instead of PVC, with the hopes of decreasing the environmental impact of their plastic flooring products. Four potential alternative plastics has been chosen based on a literature study. These are mPPE (PS), ELO, EMAA and EVA. The advantage of these is that they do not contain any chlorine, compared to PVC, which has a negative impact on the climate.

In order to evaluate the environmental impact of these plastics, a life cycle assessment (LCA) has been performed on PVC and four alternative plastics. LCA is a tool used to evaluate the environmental impact of a product throughout its lifetime. By gathering data of all the processes connected to the product and then compile all the emissions and the recourse uses, a total environmental load can be calculated. This environmental load is then translated to environmental impact by a so-called LCIA method. This is done by translating all the emissions associated with a certain environmental issue to a standard unit. For example, many are familiar with that CO2 is a greenhouse gas that increase the global warming, but also that methane is a far worse (about 25 times) greenhouse gas than CO2. The LCIA method translates all emissions that has an impact on global warming to CO2 equivalences. In this study 11 impact categories have been chosen.

It was shown that the environmental impact was lower for PVC than it was for the other plastics in most categories, including CO2 emissions. In a sensitivity analysis performed, some of the fossil-based materials used to make the plastics were substituted to materials made from bio-based resources. That led to reduced CO2 emissions for all five plastics. Interestingly enough, PVC still outperforms all the other plastics. Another thing that was found was that the origin of the electricity used also affected the environmental impact greatly. Especially for the plastics with energy demanding production processes. Swedish electricity is much more environmentally friendly than the average European electricity!

When a flooring system is produced, other materials such as additives and fillers are needed. However, this study has not taken this into account, only the plastic has been accounted for. This means that when a flooring system is made it is possible that the environmental impact is lower for the non-PVC floorings than it is for PVC. But, according to the results in this study it seems like PVC is the better choice in flooring applications at current moment. Maybe PVC has an undeserved bad reputation?

• author: Almqvist, Caroline and Larsson, Pernilla
• supervisor: Baozhong Zhang; Jonas Rothén
• organization: Centre for Analysis and Synthesis
• course: KASM15 20211
• year: 2021
• type: H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
• subject: Earth and Environmental Sciences; Chemistry; Technology and Engineering
• keywords: PVC, Flooring, Life Cycle Assessment, LCA, Polymer technology
• language: English
• id: 9058701
• date added to LUP: 2021-06-28 12:53:29
• date last changed: 2021-06-28 12:53:29