Global consumption has increased which has led to a higher burden on the climate. The environmental awareness among consumers is at an all-time high which puts pressure on companies and organizations to minimize their environmental impact. The purpose of this report has been to explore what impact air purifiers have on the environment by doing a life cycle assessment (LCA) of Blueair’s air purifier Blue 3210. The results of the LCA were then used to identify improvement proposals based on ecodesign methodology to reduce the product’s environmental impact.The results of the LCA were used to answer the question “Which part of the product’s life cycle has the greatest environmental impact forthe product Blue 3210?”. The software and database used for the analysis were GaBi and Ecoinvent. The functional unit was defined as the amount of purified air in cubic meters over 3 years.Climate change and particulate matter formation were the chosen characterization factors and different scenarios were created to explore the product’s environmental impact in different contexts. In scenario 1 the air purifier was run at its lowest speed of 2 watts, 24 hours a day, constantly for 3 years. This scenario was used as a reference scenario, as the later scenarios were compared with it. After the results of the LCA were calculated, it could be observed that the main factor of the product’s impact was the energy consumption in its use phase. The LCA showed that the total CO2-emissions in scenario 1 was 43.31 kg CO2-eq. where the use phase accounted for 66%. The total particulate matter formation in the same scenario was 0.12 kg PM10-eq.Finally, improvement proposals were created to answer the question “How can the product Blue 3210 be improved to reduce its environmental impact?”. The proposals were analyzed by using the ecodesign tool The Ten Golden Rules. The three main proposals were: applying an automatic shut-off function, moving the production from China tothe USA and developing washable filters.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-448436 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Blomberg, Daniel, Sjölén, Ida |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Industriell teknik |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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