Screening LCA of the
FLAX 27 Daysailer
Boot 2023_GB_FLAX27_Technical_Specificaiton.pdfBoot 2023_FX27_Brochure.pdfThe study in brief
The FLAX27 daysailer is a masterpiece of craftsmanship; a timeless design paired with the most modern and sustainable boatbuilding technologies. In this screening LCA, the sustainability potential will be shown, hotspots will be analysed and scaling effects will be investigated. The purpose of this screening LCA was to publish 'Top Level' data, focused on communicating the environmental benefits of natural fibre composites (NFC). We strongly believe in providing transparent evidence to support the use of NFC's across the wider marine industry. Publishing our LCA findings is the first step in encouraging wider industry transparency. The study is a cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment and includes several key aspects:
· Design phase (energy consumption)
· The natural fibre composite (NFC) materials (flax textile, bio resin and recycled PET core material)
· The NFC production process (energy consumption and consumables derived from resin infusion lamination process)
· Lead (material and process)
· Decking (cork, CNC process)
· Equipment (material and MS360 build in product-process)
· Assembly
· Plug and Mould (material and CNC-process)
The use of the MarineShift 360 software allows marine industry manufacturers to quickly and simply model the entire production process from cradle to grave. In addition to the inclusion of primary data, the software allows quick and easy access to secondary data from the EcoInvent database and offers average values from industry for many processes. The tool is a software tailored specifically for the maritime industry to create ISO14044-compliant life cycle assessments. Five impact categories are used via the impact assessment methodologies IPCC 2013 GWP 100 a (incl. CO2 uptake) v. 1.00, ReCiPe 2016 v. 1.1, Cumulative Energy Demand v. 1.11.
Climate change, known as Global Warming Potential (GWP), is a category of effects that represents the substances that contribute to increasing the greenhouse effect. The increase in global temperature is one of the central issues of humanity and has various impacts such as warming of the atmosphere and oceans, decrease in the amount of snow and ice, rise in sea level, etc. According to the IPCC method, an attempt is being made to express climate-impacting substances into a common unit, known as CO2-equivalent emissions (CO2e). The time frame of 100 years is usually chosen (GWP100).
Energy consumption or cumulative energy demand (CED) is a parameter to measure the consumption of fossil and non-fossil energy resources. Fossil resources are of particular importance due to their finite nature. The impact indicator is MJ. The calculation depends heavily on the method chosen. There is a subdivision into non-renewable biomass, renewable biomass, non-renewable fossil, non-renewable nuclear, renewable wind, solar, geothermal energies and renewable water energies.
Water consumption is an impact category that aims to record the total amount of water consumed. Ancillary processes, such as the irrigation of flax, are to be recorded. Water consumption is expressed in m³. In agricultural processes, such as flax cultivation, water consumption normally always plays a role and should therefore be included in the life cycle assessment. Furthermore, according to the Blue Economy Report of 2021, there will be an increased global water shortage. However, regionalization should be taken into account here.
Marine eutrophication is the accumulation of nutrients in the oceans. This nutrient enrichment is harmful and can lead to oxygen deficiency in the waters. In marine eutrophication, the change in concentration of nitrogen (N) is decisive. Nitrogen equivalent emissions (N-eq) are taken as the characterization factor.
Mineral Resource Scarcity is an impact category for which there are still no standardized models and still disagreement on valuation and assessment. In principle, the aim is to record the depletion of abiotic, i.e., non-living resources (e.g., copper, minerals, fossil fuels, etc.). Copper equivalent (Cu eq) is chosen as the characterization factor.
Particular findings are:
In almost all categories, the glass fibre reinforced plastic (GFRP) forms are particularly strongly represented in percentage terms, with a total share of 30-62%, e.g. see fig. The plug and moulds are very high impact due to the 1:1 nature of this study, the whole plug/mould impact is allocated to a single boat produced, where in reality you are reusing the mould tools and a sensitivity analysis for the impact of this is covered in the 'scaling' section later on.
The high calorific potential / energy density of NFCs becomes clear. Possible positive effects result from its use in various End-of-Life (EOL) scenarios.
The NFC parts bind 50% of the CO2eq emissions emitted during its production. This means that the Co2e emissions from production and the petroleum-based components in the growth phase are partially bound by the plant components.
In relation to the total weight, the equipment (rigging, fittings, Torqeedo propulsion unit, sails) has a high percentage share in all impact categories
As expected, the impact of water consumption and marine eutrophication are dominated by the upstream production of biobased materials.
Results of the hot spot analysis
The emission of greenhouse gases and the consumption of non-renewable energy in the NFC components result mainly from the resin. In the laminate, the resin accounts for 78% of the Co2e emissions and 88% of the non-renewable energy consumption, see fig. 2 & 3. The background to this is the organic content. The LCA for the bio-resin stored in the EcoInvent database refers to a resin with bio-contents of probably 20-30%. GREENBOATS uses bio-based resin systems with bio-contents of 30-99% depending on the application. The GWP and energy consumption could therefore be significantly lower than calculated.
Results of scaling effect
Results of scaling effect
Generally speaking, the less that is produced, the lower the environmental impact. The LCA of the FLAX27 includes assessments that are not scaled up for larger quantities. If the design process and the construction are allocated to all boats built, the percentage share of the environmental impact per boat is reduced. The production moulds have to be refurbished after approx. 150 demouldings with little effort. They can then withstand another 75 demouldings. Figures 4 and 5 each show an example of the saturation curve. After building approx. 10 FLAX27s, the changes per built boat are only small. However, you can see from the curve shown in Fig.4 you see up to a 50% reduction in Co2e emissions, by utilising the moulds to produce over 20 boats. A FLAX27 thus "costs" only 100k MJ instead of 310k MJ in terms of sustainability.
Results in other words
It was shown that for products made out of NFC, CO2 can be stored and thus the environmental impact can be better managed. For example, the high energy content of the NFC shows that EOL scenarios such as incineration are conceivable. On the other hand, the retained carbon could be considered as a carbon source, for example in steel production and stored for longer.
The high environmental impact of the GRP plug & mould per boat could be reduced by scaling the FLAX27 production.
Furthermore, its clear to see the majority of impact within NFC's is derived from the resin element (78%) so working closely with resin manufactures to increase the bio content and circularity of their systems is key to unlocking the full potential of NFC's. The resin manufacturers do not provide the community with a detailed selection of resin systems with corresponding LCAs in order to be able to present the potential of the systems.
Acknowledgements We would like to thank Jonathan Bravo for his valuable work on LCA for GREENBOATS. For any further information on this study, please contact hi@green-boats.com