Modelling of environmental impacts of ship dismantling

Ships at the end of their economic life and intended to dismantling are considered as residues, according to the international and EU laws on residues. Furthermore, they are considered as dangerous residues if holding important amounts of dangerous substances or when tanks have not been emptied of the respective dangerous substance load. This study presents the results of modelling the environmental impact of ships dismantling activity. The modelling was made for 23 ships of different types and for different scenarios. The data used for the modelling were collected at a Portuguese dismantling shipyard. For the modelling, a commercial software tool (SimaPro LCA) was used. From the different environmental impact assessment methods, the following were used: CML1992, 2 CML Baseline 2000, Eco-indicator 99 (H) and IMPACT 2002+. The work indicated that using different environmental assessment methods leads to similar conclusions about the relative environmental impact of the various ships. Furthermore, it was shown that the environmental impact cannot be only related to ship type and size as its composition is a major factor.