Johan Berg Pettersen- PhD in Industrial Ecology
- Professor (Associate) at Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Johan Berg Pettersen
- PhD in Industrial Ecology
- Professor (Associate) at Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Circular and life cycle engineering of production and consumption practices in households and industry.
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43
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Introduction
Johan Berg Pettersen currently works at the Industrial Ecology Programme, Norwegian University of Science and Technology. His research considers circular economy and sustainable production and consumption practices in households, waste management, and a variety of industrial applications such as aquaculture, manufacturing, metal and material production.
Current institution
Publications
Publications (43)
Longer lifetimes of consumer products are promoted as an element of sustainable consumption, yet there is a widespread notion that lifetimes are currently in decline, often attributed to planned obsolescence or throwaway mentality. However, empirical evidence is inconclusive and often subject to high uncertainties. Here, we explore long‐term trends...
Metallurgical-grade silicon is considered a critical raw material in Europe due to its supply risk and wide range of applications in technologies needed to transition to a low-carbon society. It is produced by reducing SiO 2 in quartz using carbon, traditionally a mix of fossil and biocarbon. As part of the transition to a low-carbon future, fossil...
Product life extension is often portrayed as one of the pillars of the circular economy since longer lifetimes slow down material turnover rates and thus decrease resource use and associated emissions. Strategies for product longevity can involve addressing the product “nature” (inherent product durability) or “nurture” (external factors). Yet, in...
Longer lifetimes of consumer products are promoted as an element of sustainable consumption, yet there is a widespread notion that lifetimes are currently in decline, often attributed to planned obsolescence or throwaway mentality. However, empirical evidence is inconclusive and often subject to high uncertainties. Here, we explore long-term trends...
Policy aimed at transitioning from a linear to a circular economy by recycling has gained importance the last decade, with the waste management system being critical for this transition.
This study provides a detailed model of resource use and environmental impacts, combining material flow analysis and life cycle assessment of the full waste mana...
Metals are essential for the sustainability transition and decarbonisation of society. Yet, it will be paramount to produce them sustainably and minimise the affiliated resource and energy use and the associated emissions. In the circular economy, the metallurgical industry should recycle existing material stocks, and improve its utilisation of was...
Purpose
Marine vertebrate populations have halved in the past decades, and invasive species are a major driver for this loss. While many model the spread of invasive species, a model to assess impacts of marine invasions, after introduction, has hitherto been missing. We present the first regionalized effect factors for marine invasions. These fact...
Recycling aluminium in a rotary furnace with salt-fluxes allows recovering valuable alloys from hard-to-recycle waste/side-streams such as packaging, dross and incinerator bottom ash. However, this recycling route generates large amounts of salt-slag/salt-cake hazardous wastes which can pose critical environmental risks if landfilled. To tackle thi...
Norway is one of the countries in Europe generating the most waste from electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) per capita. Extended producer responsibility schemes are incorporated as part of the national waste policy, with clear goals towards recovery of materials from the waste fraction. Investigating the WEEE flows in Norway, we observe clea...
Large volumes of bauxite residue are generated when alumina is leached from bauxite ore, within 2–3 metric tons of bauxite residue per metric ton final aluminum. The large volumes make bauxite residue an interesting source for secondary materials, for instance iron. This paper assesses environmental impacts associated with extraction of pig iron fr...
The textile industry is causing environmental impacts, driven by consumption patterns and fast fashion. Here we explore how the closing of material loops can decrease the environmental impacts of clothing consumption. We analyze the clothing system of Norwegian households in 2018 by combining material flow analysis and life cycle assessment. We map...
Engineers can make a valuable contribution for a transformation towards a sustainable society. The CDIO framework, where student-active and integrated learning is intrinsic to design-implement activities, therefore also includes sustainability competence. The purpose of this paper is to generate recommendations for alignment between specific studen...
The excessive production of bauxite residue (red mud) in the Bayer process is one of the major challenges amongst alumina producers. The Pedersen process is known as a combination of smelting reduction of bauxite and leaching treatment of the produced slag for alumina production, and the process also produces an inert bauxite residue (grey mud), wh...
Renewable reductants are intended to significantly reduce CO2 emissions from ferro-alloy production, e.g., by up to 80% in 2050 in Norway. However, charcoals provide inferior properties compared to fossil fuel-based reductants, which can hamper large replacement ratios. Therefore, conditioning routes from coal beneficiation was investigated to impr...
Lecture contribution to course in Silicon Production and Refining, online Oct 4-8 2021.
European Aluminium organised an online Cross-fertilisation workshop "Towards a more sustainable alumina production in Europe", in partnership with RemovAL and ReActiv, on the 23rd and the 24th of September 2021. In this presentation we show some of the results from the LCA work done in the RemovAl project, comparing use of BR as iron source, or as...
Recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) is an alternative technology to tackle the major environmental challenges associated with conventional cage culture systems. In order to systematically assess the environmental performance of RAS farming, it is important to take the whole life cycle into account so as to avoid ad-hoc and suboptimal environmen...
Life Cycle Assessment of Subsea Mine Tailings Disposal
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is increasingly used for environmental assessment of products and production processes to support environmental decision-making both worldwide and in the Arctic. However, there are several weaknesses in the impact assessment methodology in LCA, e.g., related to uncertainties of impact assessment results, absence of spati...
In support of continuous environmental improvement in the mining industry, it is important to systematically assess the environmental impacts of mining and mineral processing operations from a life cycle perspective. Although life cycle assessment (LCA) is widely used as an environmental systems analysis tool, the application of LCA in the mining i...
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is increasingly used to support European environmental policy and governance, e.g. on integrated pollution prevention, ecodesign directives, environmental management systems, green procurement and environmental product labelling. However, there are several known weaknesses in using LCA as an environmental decision suppor...
Introduction
Ecodesign and quantitative environmental scores from life-cycle assessment (LCA) are acknowledged elements in cleaner production. With the support of environmental information from LCA, ecodesign provides a structure to identify the major environmental challenges of existing manufacture practices, and potential trade-offs from novel te...
The aluminium scrap market is undergoing rapid changes which will trigger off new recycling strategies. As the cast scrap market saturates it will become economically feasible to apply scrap also in aluminium wrought alloy production. As part of an EU project, Sustainable and efficient Production of Light weight solutions (SuPLight) a method for as...
In this study we present a life cycle assessment model for a subset of EOR techniques applied to a field on the Norwegian Continental Shelf, focusing on a few select techniques, including polymer injection. The purpose is to document the impact of enhanced oil production on the emissions- intensity of the added barrels, for example kgCO2e/bbl. Proc...
The general focus in environmental evaluation of offshore drilling is the discharge of cuttings and chemicals to local marine environment, in some cases including emissions to air from offshore turbines and engines. However, significant impacts occur as a result of processes upstream and downstream from drilling operations, in the manufacture of ch...
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Background, Aim, and ScopeThe identification and assessment of environmental tradeoffs is a strongpoint of life cycle assessment (LCA). A tradeoff made
in many product systems is the exchange of potential for occupational accidents with the additional use of energy and materials.
Net benefits of safety measures with respect to human health are best...
Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is the method of inventorying, assessing, and interpreting environmental interventions caused by products and product systems through their life cycle. The ecotoxicity of metals has proven a challenge for LCA given metal characteristics such as reversibility of removal processes, speciation, and the effect on bioavailabi...
The full thesis is available for download (open):
http://hdl.handle.net/11250/233345
The goal of this thesis is to provide the means for discussion of overall benefits of alternative offshore drilling technologies. Life-cycle assessment is used to assess environmental impact of alternative drilling technologies. Life-cycle assessment is well-suit...
This paper presents an integrated management technique that has been employed with success over the last 8 years in Statoil operations offshore Norway. The technique has been applied in integrated management of drilling fluids and drilling waste and is particularly suited for this purpose. It is argued that the attractive feature of the technique;...
Characterization factors for ecotoxicity in life cycle impact assessment are traditionally calculated as the product of effect and fate factors. Steady-state multiple compartment models are used to calculate the fate factor, while effect factors are derived from species sensitivity distributions (SSDs) for multiple substances using average or margi...
Fate modeling for characterization of ecotoxic substances in life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA) is traditionally performed with steady-state multi-compartment models. Instantaneous mixing within compartments is an implicit assumption of the multi-compartment model. Others have shown that steady-state models can account for pulse-exposure if the ec...
