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This article aims to assess life cycle analysis of a wind turbine in Turkey regarding production, transport, construction, operation, and disposal processes in terms of energy and environment. In this context, a 2-MW three-bladed horizontal axis wind turbine has been selected. Two different scenarios have been studied which comprises wind turbines using Al-Conductor and Cu-Conductor cables. Although the cost of Al-Conductor cables is low, their joule losses are higher. The life cycle assessment of a wind turbine includes production, transportation, construction, operation and disposal, and the energy has been generated in its operation time (selected as 20 years). Iron, cast iron, steel, copper, aluminum, and oil have been sent to a recycling facility and the composite materials has been sent for incineration at the end of its life. The energy payback period has been calculated as 10 months in both scenarios and the embodied energy is 2858.2 MWh and 2830.3 MWh for wind turbine using Al-Conductor and Cu-Conductor cable during its lifetime, respectively. Air emission and wastewater production have been calculated to assess environmental impacts (global warming, acidification, eutrophication, etc.) whose consequence provides an evaluation of the life cycle assessment of a wind turbine. For example, global warming is 14.44 and 15.24 g CO2 eq./kWh for wind turbine using Al-Conductor and Cu-Conductor cable, respectively. As a result, the life cycle analysis of the wind turbines has been evaluated and compared regarding two different scenarios according to the definition of ISO 14040 standard throughout its life from production to disposal.

Microbolometer detectors have drawn attention due to their advantages such as small dimensions, light weight, low power consumption and no cooling requirement. In recent years, studies regarding the microbolometers have accelerated. Research on uncooled infrared microbolometer detectors was initiated at ASELSAN in 2014. As result of these activities, microbolometers with high TCR and low 1/f noise level have been achieved based on vanadium oxide active material. Pixel structures with high fill factor ratios are accomplished using double layer pixel architecture and high responsivity values were obtained by FPA optimizations. 640 x 480 format and 17 μm pixel pitch microbolometer FPAs along with VOx sensing layer were produced. These detectors have demonstrated state of the art NETD values (< 30 mK @ f/1) and with such properties that could be used in various applications which require high frame rates due to their low time constant values (< 12 ms). FPA fabrication has been performed on 8” CMOS ROIC wafers which are also designed by ASELSAN. 17 μm pixel pitch 640 x 480 format ROIC has been developed for resistive microbolometer detector arrays. ROIC wafers were fabricated using 0.18 μm CMOS process where 3.3 V analog and 1.8 V digital supplies are used. The ROIC has 4 analog video outputs and 2 analog reference outputs. It can be operated at 1, 2 or 4 output modes depending on the frame rate requirement. In 2-output mode of operation power consumption of the ROIC is less than 150 mW. In this paper, the details of the microbolometer detectors including the ROIC design, vacuum packaging and detector performances are presented.