Streamlined LCA in product EHS : A case study of Sandvik Mining

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is today an established environmental tool which allows companies to assess the environmental impact of its products. Considering all inputs and outputs that a product uses in its entire life cycle; an LCA study gives a quantified expression of environmental performance. Theory does however not always go hand in hand with practice and it is common that companies simply cannot justify the resources that an LCA study requires. Derived from LCA, Streamlining LCA (SLCA) offers companies a more manageable environmental assessment by deliberately excluding parts of an LCA study and still recieve results that are reliable and useful. There are however many ways to approach SLCA and a company needs to clearly understand its own unique requirements of using it. This research examines LCA and SLCA theory, and then it analyzes the case of Sandvik Mining, in order to describe how SLCA can be adapted and used as an environmental tool and incorporated into a company’s existing new product development model. The methods include literature analysis, review of both internal and external documentation, and semi-structured interviews. The findings include that SLCA can be justified at Sandvik Mining based on their current requirements of using it. A recommended incorporation of SLCA into Sandvik Mining’s new product development model is suggested. Overall, the findings are sensitive to the unique situation of the case study and these should be viewed as an initial effort to work with SLCA

Possibilities to Avoid Growth of Clostridia and/or Fungi in Wilted Silage by Use of Organic and Inorganic Salts

The hygienic quality of silage will be of great importance in the future as poor quality not only influences the animal production but also the animal health and the food quality. This study examined the impact of mixtures of sodium benzoate (NaB), sodium nitrite (NaN), hexamine (HMTA), sodium propionate (NaP), sodium bisulphite, and propionic acid on low and high wilted clover/grass. The silage (crop wilted to 300 or 600 g DM kg-1 of fresh weight) consisted of about 50% red clover (Trifolium pratense) and 50% timothy (Phleum pratense) and the study covered 7 additive treatments. The forage was un-chopped and ensiled in two types of silos: 25 litre stainless laboratory silos, stored during 100 days and 1,7 litre glass silos in 14 days. In both studies samples were taken for chemical and microbial analyses. High contents of nitrite could influence animal health and were of specific interest. Residual nitrite contents were higher in silage after 14 days than 120 days storage but both concentrations were negligible. The additives highly restricted growth of yeast in all treatments but the control silage. As a consequence of low growth of yeast in the silage, the production of ethanol was significantly lower compared to the control silage. Even the count of clostridia spores was significantly restricted in treated silages and so was the reduction in DM - losses except for treatment E. The conclusion is that sodium nitrite in combination with hexamine effectively prevented clostridia growth as well as sodium benzoate restricted yeast growth. The nitrate / nitrite concentration were reduced already after 14 days

Harvesting Silage With Two Types of Silage Trailer (Feed Rotor With Knives and Precision Chop)

Harvesting silage with a silage trailer that combines both a precision chopper and a trailer in the same machine is common in Sweden. A silage trailer with a feed rotor and knives has recently been put on the market. The objective of this study was to compare the two system

Use of Silage Additives in Ensiling of Whole-Crop Barley and Wheat - A Comparison of Round Big Bales and Precision Chopped Silages

An increasing use of whole-crop cereals, as supplementary feed, has increased interest in development of efficient ways of preserving these forages to achieve a high hygienic quality. It is known that ensiling of whole-cereals often results in silages with high concentrations of butyric acid (Weissbach & Haacker, 1988). Furthermore, problems with poor aerobic stability still persist despite the use of lactic acid bacteria (Filya et al., 2000). Therefore, the objective of this study was to examine the effect of different types of additive mixtures on the fermentation process and aerobic stability of precision chopped and baled silages

Effect of Additives at Harvest on the Digestibility in Lambs of Whole Crop Barley or Wheat Silage

There are very few published articles about how silage additives affect digestibility of whole crop silage. In this experiment, male lambs were given whole crop barley or wheat silage harvested at dough stage with a number of different acid-based and bacterial additives

Evaluation of silage diets offered to reindeer calves intended for slaughter. I. Feeding of silage and barley from September to March

An experiment involving 75 male reindeer calves (mean initial live weight 39.6 kg, SD=3.7) intended for slaughter was undertaken to study the effect of proporrion of barley to silage in the diets on animal performance. The calves were alloted to five groups including one group slaughtered at the start of the experiment in September. The remaining groups were offered diets containing either, 30% (LB), or 60% (HB) rolled barley, based on the dry matter (DM) content, until slaughter in November (LB and HB) or in March (HB). The silage (43% DM) was made from the primary growth of a predominantly grass sward preserved as plastic-wrapped big bales. Small amounts of lichens were mixed with the rations during rhe first two weeks of the experiment and the calves adapted well to the experimental diets. However, health problems and deaths occurred on borh rarions after five weeks of feeding. Since the animals fed the LB diet lost live weight and condition the experimental feeding of these calves were interrupted at the slaughter in November. Calves fed the LB diet had significantly lower daily DM intake (P<0.01). They also had lower live weighr gain (not significant), greater losses of carcass weight and fat in the abdominal cavity relative to those offered the HB diet. During the second period of the study the remaining animals offered the HB diet showed no signs of ill-health and increased live weight, carcass weighr, and fat in the abdominal cavity. The results of the presenr experiment indicate that when silage of the investigated quality is fed to reindeer calves rhe proportion of silage should not exceed 40% of the DM

Evaluation of silage diets offered to reindeer calves intended for slaughter. II. Feeding of silage and concentrate from January to March

An experiment involving 56 male reindeer calves, with a mean initial live weight of 39 kg (SD=4.6), was undertaken to evaluate the effect of the concentrate:silage ratio on the performance during feeding to slaughter. Forty four of the calves were divided in four groups, two groups each being allotted to diets with low, 60% (LC), or high, 80% (HC) proportions of a commercial pelleted feed. The remaining twelve calves were slaughtered at the start of the experiment. The experimenral period lasted from January to March. The proportions of concentrate to silage were based on the dry matter (DM) content. The silage, 44% DM, was made from the primary growth of a predominantly grass sward preserved as plastic-wrapped big bales. Animal health was good throughour the experimenr. Small amounts of lichens were mixed into the diets during the first rwo weeks of feeding and may have contributed to the lack of adapta-tionai problems. The mean daily intakes of DM and metabolisable energy were higher (P<0.01) for calves offered the HC-diet. Despite the higher feed intakes, the increased proportion of concentrate in the diet did not significantly alter live weight gains or carcass weight gains. However, the greater fat deposition (P<0.05) and better carcass gradings indicated a better condition of the animals at slaughtet when less silage was fed. This experiment was the the final part of a three year study of silage based diets for reindeer intended for slaughter and the general conclusion is that the best role of grass silage of this quality is as a limited part of the ration. The silage may, however, play an important role during the adaptation period and further detailed studies are needed to evaluate the applicability of silage as a part of the diet to reindeer

Comparison between grass-silages of different dry matter content fed to reindeer during winter

A study was made of whether the dry matter content of silage influenced performance when 17-month-old male reindeer were fed solely silage outdoor during winter. Two kinds of round-baled silages with different wilting times were offered to the animals; low dry matter (LDM silage) with a mean of 39% DM, or high dry matter (HDM silage) with a mean of 53% DM. The 115 reindeer were allotted to slaughter at the start of the experiment in October or to be fed until slaughter in January or March. During the first three weeks of the experiment small amounts of lichens were mixed with the silages and the reindeer adapted to the feeding without problems. The daily intake of DM did not differ significantly between reindeer fed the LDM or the HDM silage despite a highly significant difference in daily silage intake. This resulted in small but significantly higher gains in live weight for animals fed the LDM silage, caused by increased weight of the rumen content. All groups of reindeer either retained or lost carcass weight during the experiment, and no improvements or differences were obtained between the kinds of silages in carcass assessment or gains in fat in the abdominal cavity. Animals slaughtered in January had a lower carcass weight and dressing percentage than reindeer slaughtered in October and March. Environmental conditions during the experiment were good but nonetheless mobbing and illness still occurred. The present results concur with those of earlier studies suggesting that it seems to be the bulk of the ration rather than the dry matter content of the silage that limits the intake

Hierarchical Delay Attribution Classification using Unstructured Text in Train Management Systems

EU directives stipulate a systematic follow-up of train delays. In Sweden, the Swedish Transport Administration registers and assigns an appropriate delay attribution code. However, this delay attribution code is assigned manually, which is a complex task. In this paper, a machine learning-based decision support for assigning delay attribution codes based on event descriptions is investigated. The text is transformed using TF-IDF, and two models, Random Forest and Support Vector Machine, are evaluated against a random uniform classifier and the classification performance of the Swedish Transport Administration. Further, the problem is modeled as both a hierarchical and flat approach. The results indicate that a hierarchical approach performs better than a flat approach. Both approaches perform better than the random uniform classifier but perform worse than the manual classification.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figure

Inventering och analys av trädbestånd i arboretet Valls Hage

Arboretet Valls Hage är ett skogsbotaniskt arboretum med fokus på ett inhemskt växtmaterial i större bestånd.Det finns ingen liknande motsvarighet i landet vilket gör att arboretets framtida utveckling är en betydelsefull fråga. Valls Hage ligger i Gävle och arboretet påbörjades anläggas under mitten av 1950-talet. Arbetet pågick under ledning av länsjägmästare Ragnar Bovallius med stöd från bland annat docent Tore Arnborg, docent Nils Hylander och docent Bengt Pettersson. Samtliga av landets trädarter finns representerade på området och arboretet innefattar cirka 200 olika taxa av lignoser som hämtats från många delar av landet. Det har inte gjort någon större förnyelse av arboretet på över 40 år och en oro för arboretets framtid har uttryckts i flera olika sammanhang. Efter en period av eftersatt skötsel har ett utvecklingsarbete av nuvarande förvaltare, Gävle kommun påbörjats. Ett flertal åtgärder har åstadkommits men det kvarstår bland annat att utforma en skötsel- och utvecklingsplan för arboretet. Arbetet syftar till att vara en del i ett grundarbete för ett fortsatt utvecklingsarbete av området. Arbetet besvarar frågeställningar med en utvecklad inventeringsmodell som!är tänkt att användas i ett framtida och komplett inventeringsarbete över arboretets planterade trädbestånd. Resultatet av inventeringsarbetet av utvalda trädbestånd visar på att en föryngring av växtligheten är nödvändig. Inventeringen visar även på att många unika individer har försvunnit från ytan. Framförallt är det de pionjära arterna av det planterade materialet som tagit skada i konkurrensen från den naturliga vegetationen. Ett fortsatt skötselarbete vid arboretet är en nödvändighet för att säkerhetsställa statusen hos den befintliga vegetationen