Total life cycle analysis

Sorensen, B. (2004d). Total life-cycle analysis of PEM fuel cell car. In "Proc. 15 World Hydrogen Energy Conf., Yokohama". 29G-09, CD Rom, Hydrogen Energy Soc. Japan. 

Total life cycle analysis (LCA) is increasingly being utilized to establish the relative human health and environmental impacts of many products and processes. In these analyses, the total impacts, from the production of the raw materials for the product, through its manufacture, use and ultimate disposal are established, and then usually compared to other similar products. Environmentalists and regulators have used these principles to favor the displacement of one product in the marketplace with an allegedly more environmentally friendly product. Very often, however, it has been found that one product may exhibit high negative LCA impacts in one area, while another product may be deficient in another area. Such appears to be the case when various battery chemistries are compared. 

The components of a total life cycle analysis are generally agreed to consist of the following four basic steps ... 

Life-cycle analysis, in principle, allows an objective and complete view of the impact of processes and products on the environment. For a manufacturer, life-cycle analysis requires an acceptance of responsibility for the impact of manufacturing in total. This means not just the manufacturers operations and the disposal of waste created by those operations but also those of raw materials suppliers and product users. 

Ereduc tion of a product or service must be evaluated over its entire istoiy or life cycle. This life-cycle analysis or total systems approach (Ref. 3) is crucial to identifying opportunities for improvement. As described earher, this type of evaluation identifies energy use, material inputs, and wastes generated during a products hfe from extraction and processing of raw materials to manufacture and transport of a product to the marketplace and finally to use and dispose of the produc t (Ref. 5). 

Capital, operating, and environmental controls, and some life-cycle analysis (Total Systems Approach)... 

Life-cycle analysis of a filter shows that operation often corresponds to 70% to 80% of the filter s total environmental load and is absolutely decisive as regards environmental effect. Raw material, refining, manufacturing, and transports correspond to about 20% to 30%, while the used filter contributes at most 1%. Filters of plastic or other inflammable material can render 10 kWh to 30 kWh energy when burned, which correspondingly reduces the total environmental load from 0.5% to 1%. On the other hand, if the pressure loss in the filter is reduced by 10 Pa, the environmental load is reduced by 125 kW h per year, or approximately 5% decrease in total environmental load. Filters in industrial applications can have quite different figures. 

A useful example of sustainable design comes from BASF, and their development of the eco-efficiency tool. This tool seeks to integrate the combined aspects of each of the three pillars in an attempt to quantify the most sustainable products and illustrates some of the concerns associated with evaluating sustainable products. For example, the economic analysis includes a total cost of ownership that goes beyond the purchase price of a product to incorporate the cost of operation, the cost of environmental health and safety, and the cost of labour. Thus, even though a product may have a lower purchase price, it may be more expensive to use and thus costlier over the total life cycle of the product. 

Some of the advances in fundamental science that have led to new attitudes and approaches to environmental problems include the use of correlated chemical measurements to investigate environmental processes, development of industrial ecology as a framework for studying issues, use of life-cycle analysis to evaluate the impact of substances in the environment, recognition of the importance of speciation (in contrast to total concentration) of chemical substances, and recognition that a systems approach is often necessary to address complex environmental issues. 

A life-cycle analysis, or LCA, is a tool used to evaluate and compare the effects of a product on the environment. As the name implies, this includes everything that happens between the time the product is created until it is disposed of. Of course, this is no small task Typically it involves identifying all relevant materials that go into the production of a product, as well as all of the waste produced during the course of using the product, including things like emissions into the atmosphere, soil, and water, as well as the solid waste produced. Then one needs to evaluate the environmental impact of each of those materials and waste products, hopefully in a manner that allows for the results to readily be compared to those from other products or services. The total of these environmental impacts describes the life-cycle impact of the product. 

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