IE 5331, Fall 2012

Sustainable Engineering
Chapter 3: Life Cycle Inventory
Hong C. Zhang
Texas Tech University
Advanced Manufacturing Laboratory
September 6, 2012
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Life Cycle Inventory

OUTLINE

Definition of Life Cycle

Inventory(LCI)
Content of LCI
Flow diagram of the processes
Data collection plan
Collect data
Evaluate and report results

Life Cycle Inventory

What is Life Cycle Inventory?
A Life Cycle Inventory is a process of quantifying
energy and raw material requirements,
atmospheric emission, waterborne emission, solid
waste, and other releases for the entire life cycle
of a product, process, or activity.
In the life cycle inventory phase of an LCA, all
relevant data is collected and organized.

Life Cycle Inventory

Why conduct an LCI?
Because we need the data to support our study
We need the data to support government
agencies.
We need the data to support our engineering,
product, process design.
We need data to

Life Cycle Inventory

Key step of life Cycle Inventory
Four key steps to conduct an LCI:

Step 1 Develop flow diagram

Step 2 Data sources & type
Step 3 Collect data
Step 4 Results evaluate &report
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Life Cycle Inventory

Step 1: Develop a flow diagram
Electricity
Water
Gas

Transportation

Materials
Parts
Components

Finished Parts
Components

Process

Hazardous Material
Outputs

Non-Hazardous Material
Outputs
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Generic Unit Process

Life Cycle Inventory

Flow diagrams are used to model all alternatives
under consideration.
The more complex the flow diagram, the
greater the accuracy and useful of the results.
Boundary explication is again a challenge work in
this step.

Boundary Clarification
Electricity Water Gas

Materials/Parts
/Components

Transportation

Manufacturing
Process

Non-Hazardous Material Outputs

Finished Parts
/Components

Hazardous Material Outputs

Generic Unit Process

Boundary Clarification
Energy
Conversion

Mfg
Process
Equipment

Boundary Clarification
Energy
Conversion

Energy
Conversion

Energy
Conversion

Aux. Mfg
Process
Equipment

Mfg
Process
Equipment

Mfg
Process
Equipment

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Boundary Clarification
Energy
Conversion

Energy
Conversion

Energy
Conversion

Energy
Conversion

Materials
Production

Aux. Mfg
Process
Equipment

Mfg
Process
Equipment

Mfg
Process
Equipment

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Boundary Clarification
Energy
Conversion

Energy
Conversion

Energy
Conversion

Energy
Conversion

Materials
Production

Aux. Mfg
Process
Equipment

Mfg
Process
Equipment

Mfg
Process
Equipment

Auxiliary
Materials
Production

Energy
Conversion

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Boundary Clarification
Energy
Conversion

Energy
Conversion

Energy
Conversion

Energy
Conversion

Materials
Production

Aux. Mfg
Process
Equipment

Mfg
Process
Equipment

Mfg
Process
Equipment

Auxiliary
Materials
Production
Environmental
Conditioning
Energy
Conversion

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Boundary Clarification
Energy
Conversion

Energy
Conversion

Energy
Conversion

Energy
Conversion

Energy
Conversion

Materials
Purification
Production

Materials
Production

Aux. Mfg
Process
Equipment

Mfg
Process
Equipment

Mfg
Process
Equipment

Auxiliary
Materials
Production
Environmental
Conditioning
Energy
Conversion

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Hybrid Input Output Analysis

(transportation, capital equipment, other materials, commercial
buildings)

Energy
Conversion

Energy
Conversion

Energy
Conversion

Energy
Conversion

Energy
Conversion

Alt.
Materials
Production

Materials
Production

Aux. Mfg
Process
Equipment

Mfg
Process
Equipment

Mfg
Process
Equipment

Auxiliary
Materials
Production

Environmental
Conditioning
Energy
Conversion

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Life Cycle Inventory

Co-product from the process should be indentified
and quantified
Electricity
Water
Gas

Materials
Parts
Components

Hazardous Material
Outputs

Transportation

Process

Finished Parts
Components

Co-product

Non-Hazardous Material
Outputs

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Life Cycle Inventory

Step 2: Develop an LCI data collection plan

When ?
What ?
Where ?
Whom ?
How?

The checklist and

spreadsheet are
usually applied in this
step

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Life Cycle Inventory

Data Quality Indicators:
Benchmark to validate whether the collected data
useful.
Criteria:
Precision;
Completeness;
Representativeness;
Consistency;
Reproducibility;

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Life Cycle Inventory

Indentify data source and types
(easy to say, hard to do)
Too many, too much, too wide, too large, too
little, too rough, too , too ;
Current research in this area, data mining and
knowledge extraction are useful tolls.

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Life Cycle Inventory

Several categories of data are often used in
inventories.
Individual process- and facility-specific
Composite
Aggregated
Industry-average
Generic

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Life Cycle Inventory

Step 3 Data Collection
Data collection efforts involve a combination of
research, site-visits and direct contact with
experts, which generates large quantities of data.

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Life Cycle Inventory

Step 3 Collect Data
Atmospheric Emission
Energy

Water
Gas

Waterborne Wastes

Process
Solid Wastes

Materials
Co-product
Transportation

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Life Cycle Inventory

Step 3 Collect Data
Inputs in the Product Life-Cycle Inventory
Analysis
The decision on which raw/intermediate material
requirements to include in a life-cycle inventory is
complex, but several options are available.

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Life Cycle Inventory

Step 3 Collect Data
Incorporate all requirements, no matter how minor, on the
assumption that it is not possible a priori to decide to exclude
anything.
Within the defined scope of the study, exclude inputs of less
than a predetermined and clearly stated threshold.
Within the defined scope of the study, exclude inputs
determined likely to be negligible, relative to the intended use
of the information, on the basis of a sensitivity analysis.
Within the defined scope, consistently exclude certain classes or
types of inputs, such as capital equipment replacement.
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Life Cycle Inventory

Step 3 Collect Data
Consider the example of a refinery. Most of the refinerys
output is sold for production of petroleum-based materials.
However, a small portion, say eight percent, is used to run
the refinery. This portion, termed the parasitic fraction, is
mathematically related to the refinery output as:

108

Refinery
Process

100

8%
Input=M(1+f)
Input=M(1+f+f^2)

M is the output product and

f is the parasitic fraction (0.08)
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Life Cycle Inventory

Step 3 Collect Data
Energy
Energy represents a combination of energy
requirements for the subsystem. Three
categories of energy are quantifiable: process,
transportation, and energy of material resources
(inherent energy).

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Life Cycle Inventory

Step 3 Collect Data
Energy
Two alternatives exist for incorporating energy
inputs in a subsystem module. One is to report
the actual energy forms of the inputs, e.g.,
kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity or cubic feet
of natural gas. The other is to include the
specific quantities of fuels used to generate the
produced energy forms in the module.

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Life Cycle Inventory

Step 3 Collect Data
Energy
Computational models currently used to perform
life-cycle inventories of electricity in the United
States are based on the fuel mix in regional grids
or on a national average. In many cases where
an industry is scattered throughout the United
States, the fuel mix for the national grid
(available from the U.S.

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Life Cycle Inventory

Step 3 Collect Data
U.S. National Electrical Grid Fuel Mix for 2004
Fuel

Gigawatthours (GWh)

Percent

Coal

1,976,333

50

Nuclear

788,556

19.9

Hydro

261,545

6.6

714,600

18.1

Oil

117,591

Biomass

60,042

1.5

Other*

34,741

0.9

3,953,408

100

Natural Gas

Total

In recognition of this
fact, specific regional
grids or data from onsite facilities are
commonly used for
life-cycle inventories of
the electroprocessing
industries.
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Life Cycle Inventory

Step 3 Collect Data
Atmospheric Emissions
Atmospheric emissions are reported in units of weight and
include all substance classified as pollutants per unit
weight of product output.

Waterborne Wastes
Waterborne wastes are reported in units of weight and
include all substances generally regarded as pollutants per
unit of product output.

Solid Waste
Solid waste includes all solid material that is disposed from
all sources within the system. Solid wastes typically are
reported by weight.
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Life Cycle Inventory

Step 3 Collect Data
Transportation
The life-cycle inventory includes the energy
requirements and emissions generated by the
transportation requirements among subsystems
for both distribution and disposal of wastes.
Transportation data are reported in miles or
kilometers shipped.
Transportation is evaluated for the product
leaving each subsystem. This method of
evaluating transportation avoids any inadvertent
double-counting of transportation energy or
emissions.
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Product
Allocation for
Product A

Product
Allocation for
Product B
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Life Cycle Inventory

Step 3 Collect Data
Geographic Specificity
Natural resource and environmental
consequences occur at specific sites, but there
are broader implications. It is important to
define the scope of interest (regional vs. national
vs. international) in an inventory. A local
community may be more interested in direct
consequences to itself than in global concerns.

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Life Cycle Inventory

OUTLINE
Step 1 Develop flow diagram
Step 2 Data sources & type
Step 3 Collect data
Step 4 Results evaluate &
report

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Life Cycle Inventory

Step 4 Evaluate and Document the LCI Results
Evaluate and Document the LCI Results
Life-cycle inventory studies generate a great deal
of information, often of a disparate nature. The
analyst needs to select a presentation format
and content that are consistent with the purpose
of the study and that do not arbitrarily simplify
the information solely for the sake of presenting
it. In thinking about presentation of the results,
it is useful to identify the various perspectives
embodied in life-cycle inventory information.
Especially for some subsystems and components
that are significant to the final result.
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Life Cycle Inventory

Step 4 Evaluate and Document the LCI Results
The presentation format including these
dimensions:
Overall product system
Relative contribution of stages to the overall system
Relative contribution of product components to the
overall system
Data categories within and across stages
Data parameter groups within a category
Data parameters within a group
Geographic regionalization if relevant to the study
Temporal changes
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Life Cycle Inventory

Step 4 Evaluate and Document the LCI Results

No matter what format of the presentation is

selected (tabular or graphical), the presentation
must be designed as object-oriented
presentation. All the data and results must be
clearly presented.

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Life Cycle Inventory

Step 4 Evaluate and Document the LCI Results

Currently, checklist, spread sheet, bar chart and

pie chart are often used. However, what I would
like to remind you is that, LCA has the potential
function to be a simulation tool. In that case, the
results would be explicitly presented, and when
change decision, the system will present different
impacts.

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Tool

Vendor

URL

BEES 3.0

NIST Building and Fire

Research Laboratory

http://www.bfrl.nist.gov/oae/software/bees.html

Boustead Model
5.0

Boustead Consulting

CMLCA 4.2

Centre of Environmental
Science

http://www.leidenuniv.nl/cml/ssp/software/cmlca/i
ndex.ht

Dubo-Calc

Netherlands Ministry of
Transport, Public Works
and Water Management

http://www.rws.nl/rws/bwd/home/www/cgibin/index.cgi?site=1&doc=1785

eiolca.net

Carnegie Mellon University

GaBi 4

PE Europe GmbH and IKP

University of Stuttgart

3. Data Resources

http://www.bousteadconsulting.co.uk/products.htm

http://www.eiolca.net

http://www.gabi-software.com/software.html

SimaPro 6.0

PR Consultants

Ecoinvent 1.2

Swiss Centre for Life Cycle

Inventories

http://www.ecoinvent.ch

Environmental
Impact Indicator

ATHENA Sustainable
Materials Institute

http://www.athenaSMI.ca

GREET 1.7

DOEs Office of
Transportation

http://www.pre.nl/simapro.html

http://www.transportation.anl.gov/software/GRE
ET/index.html

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Life Cycle Inventory

Common

For impact assessment, the Eco-Indicator 99 is the most

widely used method by LCA practitioners (Cooper & Fava
2006)

Less common
Different

Eco-Indicator 99

TRACI

GaBi

(By PRe Consultants)

(By US EPA)

(By PE/U.of Stuttgart)

Acidification

Acidification

Acidification

Eutrophication

Eutrophication

Eutrophication

Climate Change

Global Warming

Global Warming

Ozone Depletion

Ozone Depletion

Ozone Depletion

Ecotoxicity

Ecotoxicity

Toxicity

Fossil fuel depletion

Fossil Fuel use

Summer Smog

Minerals depletion

Photochemical smog

Resources

Carcinogenic substances

Human Health Cancer

Respiratory (organic)

Human Health Noncancer

Respiratory(inorganic)

Human Health Criteria

Ionising radiation
Land use

Combination of
three steps:
s CFs 40Es
impact= (Vk
)
Rk
k

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Life Cycle Inventory

Case Study
Rolled Biscuit recipe
adapted from The Joy of
Cooking, Rombauer
Ingredients:
200 grams flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 Tsp sugar
tsp salt
50 grams butter
cup milk

Bake 10 minutes at 425 F

Makes 10 medium biscuits

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Life Cycle Inventory

Case Study

C
D

Generic
process

An input-output
table lists materials
flowing in and out
of a process

G
H

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Life Cycle Inventory

Case Study

Input

amount

flour

200 grams

Baking powder

2 tsp

sugar

1 Tsp

Salt

tsp

Butter

50 grams

Milk

cup

Electricity

1.5 kWh

Output
biscuits

amount
10

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Life Cycle Inventory

Case Study

Input

amount

Output

amount

flour

200 grams

biscuits

10

Baking powder

2 tsp

CO2

12 grams

sugar

1 Tsp

Various
organics

20 grams

Salt

tsp

Butter

50 grams

Milk

cup

Electricity

1.5 kWh

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Life Cycle Inventory

Case Study

1.5 kWh electricity

10 biscuits
200 g flour

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Life Cycle Inventory

Case Study

0.15 kWh electricity

1 biscuits
20 g flour

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Life Cycle Inventory

Case Study
1.43 million
tons coal

3.5 billion kWh

electricity
0.15 kWh electricity
1 biscuits
20 g flour

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Life Cycle Inventory

Case Study
61g coal

0.15 kWh
electricity
0.15 kWh electricity
1 biscuits
20 g flour

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Life Cycle Inventory

Case Study

61g coal

0.15 kWh
electricity
1 biscuits
20 g flour

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Life Cycle Inventory

Case Study

61g coal

0.15 kWh
electricity
1 biscuits
20 g flour

.7 million
tons wheat

Flour
Mill

.36 million
tons flour

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Life Cycle Inventory

Case Study

0.15 kWh
electricity

61g coal

1 biscuits
20 g flour
39g wheat

Flour
Mill

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Life Cycle Inventory

Case Study

0.15 kWh
electricity

61g coal
.0007 L
diesel
1.1 g Nit.
0.0002
biscuit

1 biscuits
20 g flour
39g wheat

Flour
Mill

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Life Cycle Inventory

Case Study

0.15 kWh
electricity

X g coal
.0007 L
diesel
1.1 g Nit.

1 biscuits
20 g flour
Y g wheat

0.0002
biscuit

Circularity effect

Flour
Mill

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Homework for Chapter 2&3

Chapter 2: What is the function-unit (FU)
in this lecture? Why FU must be equivalent,
Unique, and Comparable?
Chapter 3: Please discuss why the
following criteria are important for data
collection in LCI
Precision
Completeness
Representativeness
Consistency
Reproducibility
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Life Cycle Inventory

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