Life Cycle Impact Assessment Method for Early Design Phase of Industrial Products

The objective of this thesis is to develop a simplified life cycle impact assessment method that can reliably and quickly provide the values of Eco-indicator 99 single score, the Eco-indicator damage categories score (human health, ecosystem quality, resource depletion), environmental impacts like global warming, ozone depletion, acidification, eutrophication, photochemical oxidants potential of the product/process, which could be used in the initial design stages for alternative design comparisons and product improvements, thus leading towards green manufacturing.To achieve this, a variety of products have been chosen and the life cycle inventory data is gathered from the environmental product declarations that are provided by the original equipment manufacturers. Lifetime energy consumption of these products is then checked against all of these indicators for any correlation. The lifetime energy consumption is found to be highly correlated with all the environmental indicators except the ozone depletion potential. A Linear relationship is developed between these environmental indicators and the lifetime energy consumption. For the overall environmental impact assessment score, the single score was found by using the Eco- Indicator 99 H/A (Hierarchist perspective) normalization/weighting set as provided in the Simapro 6.0 software. Regression equations for the damage categories i.e. human health, ecosystem quality, and resources are also established. These equations for the damage categories can be helpful in avoiding weighting issues and thus provide an easier way to make comparisons of different product alternatives over these damage categories.On further analysis of the results of the performed LCAs, the chosen products are then categorized according to their nature of use. Commercial purpose products and the residential purpose products are analyzed separately for these relationships. From this set of equations, an environmentally conscious design paradigm could be established and integrated into the entire purview of industrial product design methodology.