Estimation of air pollution from ribbed smoked sheet rubber in Thailand exports to Japan as a pre-product of tires

Özet

Ribbed Smoked Sheet (RSS) is one of the leading primary rubber products and is used as a raw material for tireproduction. An emission inventory (EI) analysis was conducted for the production and transportation of RSS inThailand following the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) methodology in order to highlight improvements needed torender the processes more environmentally friendly. The air emission inventory focussed on $CO_2$, $NO_x$, $SO_x$,particulate matters (PM) and particle-bound polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) using available databases, reports and previously published papers. Data was also obtained from a small-scale RSS factory, known asa cooperative, in Songkhla province, Thailand. Upstream para-rubber industries start from RSS in Thailand.Instead, downstream industries operate under tire production in Japan. There are high exported of RSS fromThailand to tire production in Japan. The material flow during the production and export of the amount of RSSproduced and transported and the distances travelled were investigated. The results suggest that the tire production in Japan contributes more than 80% of the $CO_2$ and 90% of the $SO_x$ emissions arising during the periodfrom latex tapping to tire production. Conversely, 60% of PM and more than 90% of the PAHs were releasedfrom the drying process involving the wood-fuel burning without any pollution control devices. These resultsindicate that the environmental load due to hazardous air pollutants such as PAHs and smoke particles is seriousin Thailand and has to be reduced to achieve environmentally sustainable tire production.