CASE STUDY • RENEWABLE RESOURCES • WOOD Environmental performance assessment of hardboard manufacture Sara González-García & Gumersindo Feijoo & Petri Widsten & Andreas Kandelbauer & Edith Zikulnig-Rusch & Ma Teresa Moreira Received: 29 January 2009 / Accepted: 12 May 2009 / Published online: 29 May 2009 # Springer-Verlag 2009 Abstract Background, aim and scope The forest-based and related industries comprise one of the most important industry sectors in the European Union, representing some 10% of the EU's manufacturing industries. Their activities are based on renewable raw material resources and efficient recy- cling. The forest-based industries can be broken down into the following sectors: forestry, woodworking, pulp and paper manufacturing, paper and board converting and printing and furniture. The woodworking sector includes many sub-sectors; one of the most important is that of wood panels accounting for 9% of total industry production. Wood panels are used as intermediate products in a wide variety of applications in the furniture and building industries. There are different kinds of panels: particle- board, fibreboard, veneer, plywood and blockboard. The main goal of this study was to assess the environmental impacts during the life cycle of wet-process fibreboard (hardboard) manufacturing to identify the processes with the largest environmental impacts. Methods The study covers the life cycle of hardboard production from a cradle-to-gate perspective. A hardboard plant was analysed in detail, dividing the process chain into three subsystems: wood preparation, board forming and board finishing. Ancillary activities such as chemicals, wood chips, thermal energy and electricity production and transport were included within the system boundaries. Inventory data came from interviews and surveys (on-site measurements). When necessary, the data were comple- mented with bibliographic resources. The life cycle assessment procedure followed the ISO14040 series. The life cycle inventory (LCI) and impact assessment database for this study were constructed using SimaPro Version 7.0 software. Results Abiotic depletion (AD), global warming (GW), ozone layer depletion (OLD), human toxicity (HT), ecotoxicity, photochemical oxidant formation (PO), acidifi- cation (AC) and eutrophication (EP) were the impact categories analysed in this study. The wood preparation subsystem contributed more than 50% to all impact categories, followed by board forming and board finishing, which is mainly due to chemicals consumption in the wood preparation subsystem. In addition, thermal energy require- ments (for all subsystems) were fulfilled by on-site wood waste burning and, accordingly, biomass energy converters were considered. Several processes were identified as hot spots in this study: phenol-formaldehyde resin production (with large contribution to HT, fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity and PO), electricity production (main contribu- tor to marine aquatic ecotoxicity), wood chips production (AD and OLD) and finally, biomass burning for heat production (identified as the largest contributor to AC and EP due to NO X emissions). In addition, uncontrolled formaldehyde emissions from manufacturing processes at the plant such as fibre drying should be controlled due to relevant contributions to terrestrial ecotoxicity and PO. A sensitivity analysis of electricity profile generation (strong geographic dependence) was carried out and several European profiles were analysed. Int J Life Cycle Assess (2009) 14:456–466 DOI 10.1007/s11367-009-0099-z Responsible editors: Joerg Schweinle and Pere Fullana-I-Palmer S. González-García (*) : G. Feijoo : M. T. Moreira Department of Chemical Engineering, School of Engineering, University of Santiago de Compostela, 15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain e-mail: sara.gonzalez@usc.es P. Widsten : A. Kandelbauer : E. Zikulnig-Rusch Kompetenzzentrum Holz, WOOD Carinthian Competence Centre, 9300 St. Veit an der Glan, Austria