LIFE CYCLE ANALYSIS USING ECO-INDICATOR(ECO-it 99)

PRESENTATION BY:

SRIKANTH REDDY K

PRAKASH SHARMA

LEKHRAJ KUMAWAT

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

RESOLVING MISSING INDICATORS

AVAILABLE VERSIONS OF ECO-it

STAGES OF ECO-it

GUIDED TOUR to ECO-it

CASE STUDY

USES AND LIMITATIONS OF ECO-it

PROS AND CONS OF ECO-it

REFERENCES

Introduction

Eco-Indicator is a life cycle impact assessment tool developed by PRé Consultants B.V.

Eco-Indicator helps designers to make an environmental assessment of a product by calculating eco-indicator scores for materials and processes used.

The Eco-Indicator is split into three sections:

Production of raw materials (e.g. polystyrene), processing & manufacture (e.g. injection moulding)

Transportation of product (e.g. shipping), energy in use (e.g. electricity), consumables in use (e.g. paper)

Disposal

Introduction: Problems faced by LCA practitioners include:

LCA consists of many effects like GHG emissions, acidification and other effects but its difficult to have overall impact since there is no mutual weighing between different environmental effects.

In general careful collection of all data in a product life cycle is complex and time consuming. Usually LCA cannot be carried out in design process.

ECO-INDICATOR resolves these problems as follows:

The LCA method has been expanded to include weighing method to bring all effects under one roof.

This enables allocation of one single score which is called as eco-indicator point.

The ECO-INDICATOR of a material or process is thus a number that indicates the environmental impact based on data from life cycle inventory higher the indicator(points) higher the environmental impact.

RESOLVING MISSING INDICATORS

If an indicator value for a material or a process is missing, this causes a problem that can be resolved as follows:

Check weather the missing indicator contributes significantly to the total environmental impact.

Omission of the material or process is admissible only if its share is likely to be less.

Substitute a known indicator for the unknown one.

If one goes through the list there exists relatively close material/process to the one missed their ranges are very close. So, try substituting the most closest material for the missing one.

For example points/emissions for all the plastics are in the close range which gives an opportunity for substitution in case particular material is not available.

Consult an environmental expert to calculate new indicator value for the missing material. Other software as an alternative for expert can also be used for this purpose.

Available versions of ECO-it

There are two versions of ECO-INDICATOR namely ECO-it 95 and ECO-it 99.

ECO-it 99 is the new version.

The main effects of the changes from 95 to 99 are as follows:

In 99 resource depletion is included which gives higher value(points) for oil and gas resources compared to that of 95 version.

Land use is included in 99 which gives higher value(points) for agriculture production processes.

Dispersion and degradation of substances(materials) is included in 99 which mean that materials/substances with short lifetime(which is embedded in the database) will have less contribution to score/points.

NOTE: Values/points/scores for a particular product evaluated based on 95 and 99 cannot be compared due to inequality in score assignment .

STAGES OF ECO-it

The program structure is simple. There is a Main window with four pages:

Life cycle page, allowing you to describe the product life cycle under investigation.

Production page, where you can enter the hierarchical structure of the product, and specify the materials and production processes per part. These materials and processes are chosen from the Select a process dialog box. The database holds the points values and CO2 equivalents of material-, energy- and transport processes.

Use page, where you can enter the energy and transport components. A unique feature is the additional life cycle. This allows you to link a pre-defined product like packaging, with its own life cycle, into the use phase.

Disposal page, where you can specify the waste scenario for the product or for different parts and materials

GUIDED TOUR to ECO-it

Fields:

• By clicking on new file field in the taskbar of Eco-it software one can open a new project file

• The next symbol is to open the existing project file of Eco-it.

• This window gives information about the project such as name , date created, broad description of project(if any) author etc.

• Database used is Eco-it 1.4 which is given as default with the software.

GUIDED TOUR-CHANGING THE SETTINGS

The results can be shown as bar indicators or values by changing the settings in the view field.

GUIDED TOUR-CHANGING INDICATORS

Eco indicator provides two types of indicators to access the product.

One is the Eco indicator points indicator and the other is the equivalent CO2 indication.

The value of 1 point is equivalent to one thousandth of yearly environmental load of one average European inhabitant .

The preliminary version has only points indicator but later CO2 equivalent indication is added as most of the other LCA software do consider the CO2 emissions as an indicator to measure environmental impact.

The settings for these can be changed follows:

GUIDED TOUR-ADDING PRODUCT AND PART OF THE PRODUCT/SYSTEM As soon as the production tab is opened it shows the product. You can edit the name and quantity of the product

in the fields provided, here amount specifies the number of such products(overall score will be cumulative here).

Part of product or system can be added by simply clicking on the add part field in taskbar. You can edit both name and amount. Amount is useful to compute impact for multiple parts of same category in the system suppose the there are 100 PV panels in the system enter inventory for one module and set amount of PV module to 100.

GUIDED TOUR-ENTERING PROCESS

New process with in the part can be added by clicking the add process button in the taskbar. As soon as add process button is clicked a window pops up, from that select the appropriate inventory/input and enter the amount.

GUIDED TOUR-CHANGING UNITS AND ADDING EXTRA/NEW PART OF PRODUCT The default units are in accordance with the SI units, however the units can be changed as per requirement by

simply double clicking on the unit.

If a new part of the system is to added after completing the all the processes of previous part, click on new part button will give you an error as depicted as follows:

GUIDED TOUR-ADDING EXTRA/NEW PART(continued) In this case minimize the previous part and then add new part as shown below:

Minimize

ADD

1.New part can be named and assigned with amount same as the previous part.2.New processes for the new part can be added by simply clicking the add process button.3.Even though it looks like that new part is mentioned under the previous part but it is actually listed under the product.4.Emissions of one part were added to the product but not the previous part.

GUIDED TOUR-VIEWING RESULTS

The analysis/allocation of points is automatically done at the time of inventory, so extra simulation is required.

The results can be seen in the form of pie chart or bar chart by clicking the chart field in the taskbar. This can be done separately or combined for production and disposal stages.

CASE STUDY-LCA OF PV SYSTEM

A simple case study for LCA of stand alone PV system is done for 1kW rooftop system.

System description:

Type of PV modules used: 10 Mono silicon modules of 110 Wp (10% module losses are assumed)

Type of Mounting used: Rack mounting (aluminum)

Type of connections : DC cables are used since central inverter system with DC grid configuration is used

Type of inverter: Two 500 VA inverters are used.

NOTE: The LCI collected/given is for per area for all parts (module, mounting, DC cables etc.) except inverters which is taken for per 500VA. Those are scaled to 1kW system.

SNAPSHOT OF LCI/LCA FOR PRODUCTION

SNAPSHOT OF LCI/LCA FOR DISPOSAL

NOTE:1.The allocation of percentages for different fields like municipal, household, recycling, incineration, landfill are taken arbitrarily based on preliminary knowledge.2.Since the contribution of the disposal emissions (0.016 ton CO2) in the total emissions(5.6 ton CO2) the assumptions may not prove costly.

CASE STUDY-RESULTS

Production Disposal

CASE STUDY-RESULTS(cumulative)

Results conclude that majority of the emissions from PV system were from the production part and disposal part has negligible share in total environmental emissions.

Use and Limitations of ECO-it

The ECO-it is intended for internal use for designer to choose best environmental friendly design and process.

The standard Eco-Indicator values are not intended to use for environmental marketing, environmental labelling.

These are also not intended as an instrument for government to be used for setting standards and drawing up guidelines.

So it can be used with in companies and sectors to give an outcome of environmental friendly product.

Pro’s and Con’s:

Pro’s:

Reasonably sufficient database for simple processes.

Easy of computation

Instant results

Works well even very less amount of LCI is available

Con’s:

Chances of unavailability of indicators for some materials or processes.

No indications for selection of projects.

Inappropriate for large and complex systems

REFERENCES

1.ECO-Indicator user manual.

2. Life Cycle Inventories and Life Cycle Assessments of Photovoltaic Systems, International Energy Agency (IEA).

THANK YOU