A Study on the Life Cycle Environmental Impact Comparison of Recycled Polyol of Waste Polyurethane with Virgin Polyol

A life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology was employed to evaluate environmental impact of recycled polyol from polyurethane in an R&D stage and to suggest future direction for improvement of environmental performance of the recycling technology. The comparison result shows between recycled polyol in the developing stage and in the anticipated mass production with virgin polyol production that environmental impact of recycled polyol of the developing stage and the anticipated mass production level correspond to 93%, 60% of that of virgin polyol, respectively. The LCA result identifies improvement areas of reducing environmental impact in recycling polyols, that is, use of alkylene oxide and steam. In the future research, this must be taken into consideration for better performance of recycling technology.