This is a summary of the complete theory of the subject Life Cycle Assessment given in Module 3 of Mechanical Engineering. It compresses about 500 lecture slides into 7 pages. With this summary, I got a 7.8 for this subject.
Lecture 0 ; Introduction
What should you know for the exam?
Theory of lifecycle assessment, as discussed during lectures.
Environmental effects according to the ReCiPe midpoints methods.
LCA: ‘To analyse all effects occurring because of and during a product lifecycle.‘
Environment LCA: ‘To analyse al environmental impacts of a product lifecycle.‘
A lifecycle has 3 phases:
Assembly
Use
Disposal
An LCA is made by going through the following steps:
1. Goal definition
2. Inventory analysis
3. Profiling
4. Evaluation
5. Improvement analysis
Lecture 1; Goal definition
The basic question asked in a goal definition are:
For who is the LCA?
Why is the LCA made?
How are you making the LCA(method)?
What is the LCA about?
The goal definition can be broken down into a few sub-sections.
Determining the application.
o Defining the goal.
What is the purpose of the assessment?
o Defining the target group.
Who is going to use/should be using the results of the assessment?
o Defining the initiator.
Who ordered the LCA to be done?
Determining the depth of study.
o Included components.
What is the level of detail should the LCA have?
o Included processes/environmental effects.
Describe what impact assessment method will be used.
o Defining geographical validity.
In what regions are the results of the LCA valid? And why?
o Defining temporal validity.
How long will the results of the LCA remain valid? And why?
Defining the subject of the study.
, o Defining the product and product group.
What exactly is your product? For example: there are multiple different coffee machines.
o Defining the system boundary.
What do you include and exclude in your inventory? For example: Are the disposable
cups part of your coffee machine? And why?
Defining the functional unit. (VERY IMPORTANT!!)
o A functional unit(FU) should contain 3 parts:
The main function.
What should your product do?
One product can have multiple different functions.
Different products can fulfil the same function.
o Therefore the function should be specific for everybody to
understand what products to compare. However, it should leave
enough freedom to add new products to the comparison.
A specification of the function, main limitation or clarification.
A unit of calculation.
How much of the functions should be calculated to be able to express the lifecycle
in a number of functional units?
Functional units can sometimes contain more than one unit.
Choose the smallest logical unit (multitudes of 10)
For example if the lifespan is 8 years. The unit can be per 1 year, but
NOT per 8 years.
Example functional unit:
FU: To serve as a drink container for 200cc of hot beverages three times a day for one year.
Main function: To serve as an drink container.
Unit: One year.
To fulfil the amount of Functional unit
1095 plastics cups are needed.
1 year of usage of a ceramic mug with a life span of 4 years and cleaning. Thus 1
lifecycle of the mug fulfils the FU 4 times. The FU is ¼ of the whole life cycle of
the mugs.
For the project in module 3 we use the 18 midpoint effects of ReCiPe. These 18 midpoints are:
1. Climate change (CC)
2. Ozone depletion (OD)
3. Terrestrial acidification (TA)
4. Freshwater eutrophication (FE)
5. Marine eutrophication (ME)
6. Human toxicity (HT)
7. Photochemical oxidant formation (POF)
8. Particulate matter formation (PMF)
9. Terrestrial ecotoxicity (TET)
10. Freshwater ecotoxicity (FET)
11. Marine ecotoxicity (MET)
12. Ionising radiation (IR)
13. Agricultural land occupation (ALO)
14. Urban land occupation (ULO)
15. Natural land transformation (NLT)
16. Water depletion (WD)
17. Metal depletion (MD)
18. Fossil fuel depletion (FD)
Lecture 2; Inventory analysis
The inventory analysis can be broken down into a few different sub-sections:
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