Life cycle assessment databases

Abstract Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a useful tool to assess impacts of cradle-to-grave chains of products/services. In the Riskcycle framework, the focus is on additives. Additives are usually minor constituents of products, but depending on their specific properties they can be important in the total scope of impacts of such products. In the LCA literature, additives are hardly visible. Most case studies of products containing additives do not mention them. The reasons for this are unclear, but are at least partly due to the fact that information on additives is not included in standard LCA databases. This is true for both life cycle inventory (LCI) and life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) databases. Therefore, it is difficult to conclude whether or not additives indeed are important contributors to environmental impacts over the life cycle. 

We start with a definition of the problem and based on this, we identify the candidates (such as, molecules, mixtures and formulations) through expert knowledge, database search, model-based search, or a combination of all. The next step is to perform experiments and/or model-based simulations (of product behavior) to identify a feasible set of candidates. At this stage, issues related to process design are introduced and a process-product match is obtained. The final test is related to product quality and performance verification. Other features, such as life cycle assessment could also be introduced at this stage. 

Berthoud, A., Maupu, P., Huet, C., Poupart, A., 2011. Assessing freshwater ecotoxicity of agricultural products in life cycle assessment (LCA) a case study of wheat using French agricultural practices databases and USEtox model. The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment 16, 841—847. 

Frischknecht, R., Jungbluth, N., Althaus, H.-J., Doka, G., Dones, R., Heck, T., HeUweg, S., Hischier, R., Nemecek, T., Rebitzer, G., Spielmann, M., 2005. The ecoinvent database overview and methodological framework. International Joumal of Life Cycle Assessment 10, 3-9. 

ALCAS. (2012). Australian Life Cycle Assessment Society and AusLCI Database Initiative, http //www.alcas.asn.au [accessed 23 August 2012]. 

Boesch ME, Hellweg S, Huijbregts MAJ, Frischknecht R. Applying cumulative exergy demand (CExD) indicators to the ecoinvent database. Int J Life Cycle Assess 2007 12(3) 181—90. 

Frischknecht R, Jungbluth N, Althaus HJ, Doka G, Dones R, Heck T, et al. The ecoinvent database overview and methodological framework. Int J Life Cycle Assess 2005 10(1) 3—9. 

Tools should be developed for conventional, environmental, and social life cycle assessment and costing. This will require creation of accurate, condensed impact databases. 

Life cycle assessment of SOFC technology is still uncommon due to the relatively early stage in technical development. However, several studies have been performed since the end of the 1990s. Since there is a lack of standard commercial equipment that could serve as a basis and reference point for analysis, LCA studies mostly refer to hypothetical concepts and/or extrapolate from laboratory and early market prototypes to commercial units. While the first studies had only little access to operation data at aU (for the fuel cell system itself but also for production processes), the main effort was set in the assessment of inventory data using assumptions, simplifications, and correlations [79, 80]. The main outcomes of these studies were the identification of weak points and the setting of benchmarks for further development. With more information about fuel cells available today and a simultaneous advancement in LCA methodology, the studies became more reliable and detailed, regarding system description [81] as well as the assessment of environmental impacts coimected with inputs and outputs [82]. Especially the extensive data of these two studies found their way to commercial databases for LCA [83] and thereby became available to LCA practitioners. In 2005, the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU)... 

The fluoropolymer industry has already mastered successfully many of the important challenges in respect to the environmental impact of fluoropolymer manufacturing (e.g., ban of chlorine-containing fluorocarbons, explosion risks, PFOA-phase out). Life cycle assessments, including ecobalances (e.g., according to ISO 14040/14025) have been initiated also to demonstrate the value of specific fluoropolymers (recently such a study about ETFE was published [100]). While a comprehensive view of the impact of fluoropolymer manufacturing can be tedious to assemble, as the worldwide existing data from the various databases (e.g., ProBas [101], Ecoinvent [102]) are not... 

In this chapter the risk assessment is briefly introduced. Risk assessment is divided into four steps hazard identification, hazard characterization, exposure assessment, and risk characterization. This chapter also highlights five risk and life cycle impact assessment models (EUSES, USEtox, GLOBOX, SADA, and MAFRAM) that allows for assessment of risks to human health and the environment. In addition other 12 models were appointed. Finally, in the last section of this chapter, there is a compilation of useful data sources for risk assessment. The data source selection is essential to obtain high quality data. This source selection is divided into two parts. First, six frequently used databases for physicochemical... 

Keywords Environmental and risk assessment models, Life-cycle Impact assessment models, Physicochemical and toxicological database... 

Three different criteria have been used in order to assess the optimum designs achieved through the above mentioned formulations The initial construction cost the total life-cycle cost and the torsional response criterion. Eor the second and third assessment criteria, ground motions chosen from the Somerville and Collins (2002) database, belonging to 50/50, 10/50 and 2/50 hazard levels (see Table 7), were used. 

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