Integrated modelling of sustainability of ship technologies

The highest environmental impacts of a ship's life cycle occurred during building and end-of-life / recycling phase. In this study, data gathered from the related sites in Turkey for steel hull building and its almost reverse process of steel hull recycling phases for different type of ships have been assessed by using SimaPro 8.2.3 software and CML-IA methodology to determine environmental impacts categories of abiotic depletion, abiotic depletion (fossil fuels), acidification, eutrophication, global warming, ozone depletion, human toxicity, freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity, marine aquatic ecotoxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity and photochemical oxidation. Results from life cycle inventories and impact assessment shown that 85 percent of the related impacts caused by shipbuilding and the complexity of the ship type have a significant effect on these impacts. The paper showed LCA to be a valuable tool which can help stakeholders such as ship owners, shipyards managers, classification societies, ship recycling facilities and public authorities in marine end environmental industries.