Advances in Intelligent Manufacturing by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789811545658
Publisher: Springer Singapore

2 Background of LCA

The LCA came to the picture in the 1960s due to increased concern about the ecological degradation and depletion of natural sources of energy. LCA had the first application in packaging studies and in the early stages of its development,it mainly focused on energy and emissions [17]. There have been numerous efforts to develop LCA methodology since the 1970s, but it has been receiving much consideration from researchers of environmental science since the 1990s. The term LCA was coined in the 1990s; earlier it was known by the names of life cycle oriented methods and Resource and Environmental Profile Analysis (REPA), eco-balancing resource and cradle-to-grave assessment [18, 19]. The earlier development of LCA primarily took place in northern America and Europe. In earlier methods of LCA, material and energy accounting were predominately considered. The earlier developed method primarily focused on energy efficiency, source use, emissions of gases, and generation of solid matter as waste, from each industrial process [20]. There was no uniformity of the applied methods in the early years of LCA development because ecological concerns addressed by the methods tended to change with public anxieties. Earlier impact assessment method represented the amount of water and pollutants needed to dilute up to the safe levels [21].

Main characteristics of LCA

Take a life cycle perspective

The LCA considers the product system or life cycle perspective which means all the practices needed to make the product are taken into account. The main reason to consider life cycle perspective is that it permits to recognize and avert the problem alteration between various stages of life cycle or processes.

Cover a wide scale of ecological issues

In LCA, not only the exposure to processes over the whole product life but also complete coverage of ecological issues is done. It not only covers climate change but also ponders a wide kind of eco-friendly issues. These issues comprise climate change, water use, occupation and land transformation, hypertrophication, etc.

Is Quantitative

LCA is quantitative in the sense that it is used to investigate the ecological effects of numerous processes and systems under consideration. The quantitative assessment by LCA results in the identification of a process or system that is better from the environmental point of view [22].

Is based on science

LCA is associated with science as the assessment of potentials effects is intrinsic in a natural science like measurement of water consummation by a flow meter, etc. In LCA, a value judgment is done to allocate weights to numerous kinds of environmental issues for estimation of the inclusive impact of the system under consideration.

To model complex product systems, propagation of LCI data and impact valuation methodologies made a need for devoted LCA software and the first version of both SimaPro and GaBi software were unconfined in 1990 [23]. In the early 1990s, a very impactful assessment method was developed: CML 92, EPS method and Eco indicator-99 [24]. The early 1990s also show the birth of many inventory databases managed by different institutions to cover a wide spectrum of processes. The

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