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General comment Both primary and secondary data are used. The main sources for primary data are the bill
of materials and technical drawings, while site specific foreground data are provided by
ABB. Furthermore, information and data obtained from other LCA studies are also used.
This includes the LCA of GSec (ABB document ID: 2RDA045546, rev. B) and the EPD of the
Current Transformer TPU 43.13 (ABB document ID: 1VLG101084, rev. A).
For all processes for which primary data are not available, generic data originating from
the ecoinvent v3.9.1 database, “allocation, cut-off by classification”, are used. The LCA
software used for the calculations is SimaPro 9.5.
The utility consumption and waste generation at the ABB manufacturing site is allocated
to the production of one reference flow SDC 12/17,5kV by using allocation rules. This is
done by allocating electricity to surface area and production volume, heating and waste
to surface area. Water is allocated directly to employees of the line involved in the study.
For the end-of-life allocation, the “Polluter Pays” principle is adopted according to what is
defined in the CEN/TR 16970 standard, as required by the PCR EPDItaly007. This means,
waste treatment processes are allocated to the product system that generates the waste
until the end-of-waste state is reached. The environmental burdens of recycling and
energy recovery processes are therefore allocated to the product system that generates
the waste, while the product system that uses the exported energy and recycled materials
receives it burden-free. However, the potential benefits and avoided loads from recovery
and recycling processes are not considered because it is not required by EPDItaly007.
According to PCR EPDItaly007 “Electronic and electrical products and systems”, the cut
off criteria can be set to a maximum of 2% of the overall environmental impacts. In this
LCA, components like adhesive, glue and grease have been excluded as their weights are
negligible. This same applies to packaging, where small parts such as sticking labels are
even smaller fraction of the total mass.
Surface treatments like tin plating, and painting have been considered in the LCA model.
Black oxide and phosphate conversion coating (negligible usage) have been excluded due
to the model complexity and unavailability of reference data.
Scraps for metal working and copper transformation, considered as waste from the
internal transformation process from raw material to finished product, were calculated
and included in the LCA model.
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