LCA REPORT Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

LCA REPORT - Essay Example (UNEP 2001-2003). Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool for the systematic evaluation of the environmental aspects of a product or service system through all stages of its life cycle. The assessment provides an adequate instrument for environmental decision support. In this paper we will use the life cycle of a kettle as our reference. The study of a kettle has used a flexible life cycle assessment (LCA) and cost model. The model has been used to assess and compare the environmental impacts and associated economic costs. Based on the standards made by the International Standards Organization, the LCA consists of four phases: The goal and scope definition, inventory analysis, impact assessment and interpretation. The phases of LCA is an interactive process, in which subsequent interactions can achieve increasing levels of detail or lead to changes in the first phase prompted by the results of the last phase. The life cycle assessment has proven to be a valuable tool to document and analyze environmental considerations of product and service systems that need to be part of decision making toward sustainability. Goal and Scope definition: the product or services to be assessed are defined a functional basis for comparison is chosen and the required level of detail is defined. The steps in identifying the goal and scope includes the defining of the purpose of the LCA study, ending with the definition of the functional unit, which is the quantitative reference for the study. Defining the scope of the study includes the drawing up of a flowchart of the unit processes that constitute the product system under study, taking into account a first estimation of their inputs from and outputs to the environment ( the elementary flows or burdens to the environment). Defining the data required, which includes a specification of the data required both for the inventory analysis and for the subsequent impact assessment phase. The Inventory analysis - the energy carriers and raw materials used, the emissions to atmosphere, water and soil, and different types of land use are quantified for each process, then combined in the process flow chart and related to the functional basis. In this phase the following steps must be taken: Data collection which includes the specification of all input and output flows of the processes of the product system, both product flows (i.e flows to other unit processes) and elementary flows (from and to the environment). Normalization to the functional unit, which means that all data collected are quantitatively related to one quantitative output of the product system under study, most typically 1 kg of the material is chosen, but often other units like car or 1 km of mobility are preferred. Allocation which means the distribution of the emissions and resource extractions of a given process over the different functions such a process. Data evaluation, which involves a quality assessment of the data by performing sensitivity analyses. The result of the Inventory Analysis, consisting of the elementary flows related to the functional unit, is called the Life Cycle Inventory Table. Impact assessment, in this phase the effects of the resource use and emissions generated are group and quantified into a limited number of impact categories which there maybe weighted for importance. This aim to make