Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Life Cycle Inventory (LCI)'

Aluminium die casting is a process used to transform molten aluminium material into automotive gearbox housings, wheels and electronic components, among many other uses. It is used because it is a very efficient method of achieving near net shape with the required mechanical properties. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a technique used to determine the environmental impacts of a product or process. The Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) is the initial phase of an LCA and describes which emissions will occur and which raw materials are used during the life of a product or during a process. This study has improved the LCI technique by adding in manufacturing and other costs to the ISO standardised methods. Although this is not new, the novel application and allocation methods have been developed independently. The improved technique has then been applied to Aluminium High Pressure Die Casting. In applying the improved LCI to this process, the cost in monetary terms and environmental emissions have been determined for a particular component manufactured by this process. A model has been developed in association with an industry partner so this technique can be repeatedly applied and used in the prediction of costs and emissions. This has been tested with two different products. Following this, specialised LCA software modelling of the aluminium high pressure die casting process was conducted. The variations in the process have shown that each particular component will have different costs and emissions and it is not possible to generalise the process by modelling only one component. This study has concentrated on one process within die casting but the techniques developed can be used across any variations in the die casting process.

Sustainability is now a key concept in the infrastructure sector, and an increasing number of projects are being developed with this view. For this reason, sustainability in the construction must be pursued by analyzing the multiple impacts on economic, social and environmental levels during all processes of the life cycle of the infrastructure. It is necessary, therefore, that the decision-making process at the basis of the project design is informed by data on impacts determined by the choices that are made. This thesis work promotes the use of life cycle assessment data in the design phase of railways infrastructures, being part of the BIM for Rail-LCA project with the aim of defining a methodological framework for the assessment of the environmental footprint of railway infrastructures and developing specific inventories and datasets. The methodological framework identified is compliance with the ISO 14040-44 and to the EN 15804. Furthermore, the PCR Railways 2013, the PEF methodology and the PEFCR Guidance are identified as additional references to further specify some methodological aspects. The development of the inventories was carried out in accordance with the defined framework. For the development of the datasets, the ILCD format is used, considering the ILCD Entry level requirements as a reference for data quality. The development of the inventories and datasets was made possible by means of a data collection carried out with an analysis of the scientific literature and with a series of meetings held with the designers of the Italferr company. Using this information and data, it was possible to develop 8 different inventories and related LCIA, and 3 specific datasets for the trench, embankment and track structures. The data collection activities allowed a good level of information to be revealed and, also, several gaps were identified, which deserve further activities in terms of data and information collection and development.

Our common future involves many important challenges. People and nature need to improve the relationship in order to reach an ecologically sustainable development. In a society where consumption of products steadily increases, the consumer awareness about social and environmental issues connected to the products becomes an importent factor. More and more companies choose to work more actively with these issues and more and more products get labelled by some of the eco labelling organisations. From the cradle to the gate means that a study has been done on a part of a products life cycle. In this master thesis a pair of cotton trousers has been followed from the cotton field and through the manufacturing chain in order to sees how much resource that are connected to the cultivation and to the production. Methological approach has been Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) according to ISO 14040. The empirical material is collected in South India, in an area known for its intense cotton manufacturing.

Studies like this can be a good way of showing the environmental impacts of a certain product. LCI can for example work as a criterion for eco labelling, but the methodology could also support the overall environmental work in companies.

Questo lavoro di tesi si inserisce nell'ambito del progetto LIFE+ AGRICARE, il cui obiettivo è quello di dimostrare come l’applicazione di avanzate tecniche di agricoltura di precisione, abbinate a diversi tipi di coltivazione conservativa, possa avere un effetto importante in termini di riduzione di gas climalteranti e di protezione del suolo. In particolare la tesi aveva come obiettivo quello di studiare come il software PestLCI risponde quando varia la lavorazione del terreno, informazione che è inserita fra le variabili di input. Il software PestLCI calcola il frazionamento fra i diversi comparti ambientali (aria, suolo, acque sotterranee) di un pesticida sparso su un campo coltivato. Per tale motivo PestLCI può essere definito un software di supporto al calcolo dell’inventario nell’applicazione della metodologia Life Cycle Assessment. I risultati di questo studio hanno evidenziato come PestLCI vari le frazioni di pesticida emesse nei diversi comparti ambientali in base alla lavorazione del terreno. In particolare, considerando gli scenari in cui viene applicata la Terbutilazina, è stato possibile mostrare come le frazioni emesse nelle acque sotterranee siano strettamente collegate alla lavorazione del campo. Infatti queste emissioni aumentano se diminuisce la lavorazione del campo; ciò è causato principalmente dall’incremento dei macropori presenti nel suolo dato dalla minor lavorazione del terreno, i quali permettono un collegamento diretto verso le acque sotterranee e quindi facilitano le emissioni in questo comparto ambientale.

Products, throughout their life cycle from production to waste management, create emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG). This leads to environmental impacts on the climate (Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, 2016). The consumed products from households are increasing (World Wildlife Fund, 2008) and so is the waste generated from them (Avfall Sverige, n.d.). A more sustainable development generating from circular economy should be focused on to increases the reuse of products and by so reduce the amount of waste generated (Göteborgs Stad, n.d.a.) This study have examined if the use of Free Shops can help the city of Gothenburg to reach higher up the waste management hierarchy towards reuse and prevention, and if carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) can be avoided by using Free Shops.    Two Free Shops with the purpose to increase reuse in Gothenburg have been studied and their effect on GHG emissions, presented as CO2e, have been analysed. A Life Cycle Inventory Study (LCI) has been conducted on all, but two, different materials entering the Free Shops for four weeks, including the production, waste management, transportation and storage. The result of the study shows that a mean of 10 ton CO2e per Free Shop per year can be avoided when reusing at a Free Shop instead of buying new products. This equals leaving a low energy lamp on for approximately 590 years (World Wildlife Fund, 2009) based on a low energy lamp using 0,007 kWh (Eon, 2007). To examine if the Free Shops can reduce the amount of waste disposed of by households in Gothenburg the material entering the Free Shops was weight and analysed to estimate how it corresponded to the amount of waste disposed of. The result shows that the material entering a Free Shop only corresponds to 0.0025 percent of the household waste disposed of in the city. This indicates that Free Shops by themselves will not solve the problem with increasing amounts of waste and emissions from increasing production. However, they can help in a small scale.

20180625

A growing number of companies realise that to achieve their environmental goals and satisfy stakeholder expectations, they need to look beyond their own facilities and to involve their suppliers in environmental initiatives. A life cycle approach means that the production system should be optimised as whole, across national boarders and individual organisations taking part all the way from extraction to disposal. This study is a Life Cycle Inventory of resources used when producing a piece of cotton garment and the method is based on the standardisation series of ISO 14040-43. The area of study, Tamil Nadu the most southern state of India, accounts for more than 90% of India’s knitwear exports to Western Europe. The main conclusion is that the Life Cycle Inventory could bean appropriate method to be used within the textile industry but the main advantage may not be in solving problems but instead framing them in a distinctive way and making people aware of them. An approach that combines life cycle and sustainability concepts could be a way towards enhanced corporate responsibility.

L'analyse du cycle de vie (ACV) est une méthode très utilisée pour l'évaluation environnementale d'un système anthropique. Les spécialistes ont souligné l'absence de dimension temporelle comme une limitation. Les procédés de la technosphère sont dynamiques, ce qui conduirait à un inventaire de cycle de vie (ICV) dépendant du temps. Les mécanismes environnementaux impliqués dans la génération des impacts ont des caractéristiques dynamiques variées déterminant une manifestation temporelle spécifiques des impacts. Cependant, l’impact du cycle de vie (EICV) actuelles considère des modèles en conditions stationnaires et des horizons de temps arbitrairement fixés. L'objectif de cette thèse est de contribuer au développement d'une méthodologie opérationnelle et des outils adaptés pour la prise en compte du temps dans l'ACV, en accordant une importance au développement d'une approche de modélisation intégrée pour l’ICV et l’EICV. La première contribution de cette thèse concerne le développement d'une base de données temporelle, en s'appuyant sur la base de données ecoinvent, dans laquelle les paramètres temporels ont été attribués aux sets de données. Des indicateurs dynamiques pour le changement climatique et la toxicité ont été développés en adaptant les modèles disponibles et ils ont été mis en place dans un outil de calcul propre. L'approche de modélisation tient compte de la nature fluctuante des émissions des substances en fonction du temps calculées par le modèle d’ICV temporel DyPLCA
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a widely used method for the environmental evaluation of an anthropogenic system. However, LCA scholars pointed out the lack of a temporal dimension as a limitation. The processes of technosphere are dynamic which leads to a time dependent life cycle inventory (LCI). Environmental mechanisms involved in impact developments have distinct dynamic behaviors determining specific temporal occurrence. However, the current life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods consider arbitrarily fixed time horizons and/or steady state conditions. The objective of this thesis is to contribute to the development of an operational methodology and adapted tools for the consideration of time dependency in LCA, with emphasis on the development of an integrated modelling solution for both the life cycle inventory and the life cycle impact assessment phases. The first contribution of this thesis concerns the development of a temporal data base, leaning against ecoinvent data base, in which temporal parameters have been attributed to the data sets. Dynamic climate change and toxicity impacts were developed by adapting available models and were implemented in a homemade computational tool. The modelling approach takes into account the noisy nature of substance emissions in function of time as calculated by DyPLCA temporal LCI model

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Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)
The construction sector is one of the sectors that most require natural resources and generate waste throughout the production chain. In this sense, given the need to preserve the environment and natural resources for future generations, the industry needs to improve the environmental performance of its operations chain. In order to achieve effective improvements by the actions developed by the sector, these actions need to be based on information about the environmental performance that are objective and verifiable. One of the methods that allow the collection of environmental information is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which is one of the main tools of environmental impact assessment for the lifecycle of products and systems. The LCA allows to evaluate the impacts of raw material extraction, manufacturing process, use and disposalt. In this context, a study of the manufacturing process of structural ceramic blocks (cradle to factory gate) was conducted, aiming to analyze its main impacts and processes that contribute most to these environmental impacts. To conduct this study data collection was performed in two plants located in the State of São Paulo. Based on data collected locally and on the international database Ecoinvent®, the life cycle inventory (LCI) was drawn up with the necessary adaptations to represent the local context. Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) was carried out using the following methods: CML 2002, Edip 97, USEtox and IPCC 2013. Based on the LCIA results, it was possible to identify the processes that contributed to each of the impacy categories analyzed, with the electricity being the process that most contributed to all categories. But the fuel used in the burning of the blocks, in turn, did not generate significant environmental impacts due to factories studied using biomass. Therefore, this study allowed to evaluate the magnitude and importance of the environmental impacts generated by the manufacture of ceramic bricks and also to characterize the environmental performance of ceramic bricks based on LCA.
A construção civil é um dos setores que mais consome recursos naturais e gera resíduos na sua cadeia de produção. Neste sentido, diante da necessidade de preservar o meio ambiente e os recursos naturais para as futuras gerações, é fundamental que o setor melhore o desempenho ambiental de suas operações. Para que as ações desenvolvidas pelo setor resultem em melhorias efetivas, é necessário que elas sejam subsidiadas por informações sobre o desempenho ambiental, que sejam objetivas e verificáveis. Um dos métodos que permite a compilação de informações ambientais é a Avaliação de Ciclo de Vida (ACV), que se apresenta como um dos principais instrumentos de avaliação dos impactos ambientais gerados durante o ciclo de vida de produtos e sistemas. A ACV permite avaliar os impactos desde a extração de recursos naturais, processamento de matéria-prima, manufatura até o uso e descarte dos mesmos. Neste contexto, foi realizado um estudo do processo de fabricação de blocos cerâmicos estruturais (do berço ao portão da fábrica) com o intuito de averiguar seus principais impactos ambientais e os processos que mais contribuem para estes impactos. Para realizar este estudo, foi feita a coleta de dados em duas fábricas localizadas no Estado de São Paulo. Com base nos dados coletados in-loco e na base de dados internacional Ecoinvent®, o inventário do ciclo de vida (ICV) foi elaborado com as devidas adaptações para que representasse o contexto local. A partir do ICV, foi realizada a avaliação dos impactos do ciclo de vida (AICV) por meio dos métodos CML 2002, EDIP 97, USEtox e IPCC 2013. Com base nos resultados da AICV, foram identificados os processos que mais contribuíram para cada uma das categorias de impacto analisadas, sendo a eletricidade o processo que colaborou de forma mais significativa para todas as categorias. Já o combustível utilizado na queima dos blocos, por sua vez, não gerou impactos ambientais significativos, devido às fábricas estudadas utilizarem biomassa. Portanto, o presente estudo permitiu avaliar a magnitude e significância dos impactos ambientais gerados pela fabricação de blocos cerâmicos, bem como caracterizar o desempenho ambiental de blocos cerâmicos com base em ACV.

The prospect of reducing environmental impacts is a key driver for the research and development (R&D) of new forest products. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is often used for assessing the environmental impact of such products, e.g. for the purpose of guiding R&D. The aim of this thesis is to improve the methods and practices of LCA work carried out in the R&D of forest products. Six research questions were formulated from research needs identified in LCA work in five technical inter-organisational R&D projects. These projects also provided contexts for the case studies that were used to address the research questions. The main contributions of the research are as follows: Regarding the planning of LCA work in inter-organisational R&D projects, the research identified four characteristics that appear to be important to consider when selecting the roles of LCAs in such projects: (i) the project’s potential influence on environmental impacts, (ii) the degrees of freedom available for the technical direction of the project, (iii) the project’s potential to provide required input to the LCA, and (iv) access to relevant audiences for the LCA results. Regarding the modelling of future forest product systems, it was found that (i) it is important to capture uncertainties related to the technologies of end-of-life processes, the location of processes and the occurrence of land use change; and (ii) the choice of method for handling multi-functionality can strongly influence results in LCAs of forest products, particularly in consequential studies and in studies of relatively small co-product flows. Regarding the assessment of environmental impacts of particular relevance for forest products, it was found that using established climate impact assessment practices can cause LCA practitioners to miss environmental hot-spots and make erroneous conclusions about the performance of forest products vis-à-vis non-forest alternatives, particularly in studies aimed at short-term impact mitigation. Also, a new approach for inventorying water cycle alterations was developed, which made it possible to capture catchment-scale effects of forestry never captured before. To connect the LCA results to global challenges, a procedure was proposed for translating the planetary boundaries into absolute product-scale targets for impact reduction, e.g. to be used for evaluating interventions for product improvements or for managing trade-offs between impact categories.

Inom sjukvården används – precis som överallt där människor sover – sängkläder av hygienskäl. Problem med smittspridningar av typen multiresistenta bakterier (MRSA) och spridning av andra sjukdomar har drivit företag som Cellcomb i Karlstad AB till att utveckla engångssängkläder för att förhindra detta. Engångssängkläderna är skyddade av en biofilm som ska ge ökat skydd mot bakterier och fungerar som en barriär så att inte vätska tränger igenom. Problemet är att det inte finns mycket till underlag för hur engångssängkläderna står sig mot vanliga sängkläder ur miljösynpunkt. I dagsläget använder sjukhus traditionella sängkläder till sina patienter och sedan transporteras dessa till tvätteri och tvättas. Att tvätta och torka sängkläder är energikrävande och ett alternativ till detta skulle kunna vara att använda engångssängkläder. En förenklad LCA gjordes för att ta reda på om sängkläder tillverkade av bomull och polyester eller engångssängkläder tillverkade av polypropylen alternativt viskosmaterialet Tencel är det mest miljövänliga. För att ta reda på det gjordes studiebesök och data samlades in genom en litteraturstudie och från företag. Resultaten visade att i ett grundfall med Centralsjukhuset i Karlstad var energianvändningen för de tvättbara sängkläderna lägre än Tencel och försumbart lägre än polypropylen. Flera fall med känslighetsanalyser gjordes för att undersöka hur indata påverkade resultaten. Fallen visade att det kan variera vilket av alternativen som blir mest gynnsamt, framför allt när det gäller vilken typ av energi tvätteriet använder. Engångssängkläderna av Tencel visade sig vara bäst när det gällde andel förnybar energi följt av de tvättbara sängkläderna och sist polypropylen. Ur ett ekotoxicitets- och vattenanvändningsperspektiv blev båda engångssängkläderna mer gynnsamma än de tvättbara sängkläderna. Två slutsatser kan dras utifrån den här studien: de tre alternativen är likvärdiga energimässigt utifrån energianvändning, andel förnybar energi och de fallstudier som gjorts, men att engångssängkläderna står sig bättre när det gäller ekotoxicitet samt vattenanvändning. Den andra slutsatsen är att resultaten är fallberoende. En utökad studie skulle kunna göras med fler viktiga miljöparametrar och fler känslighetsanalyser.
In healthcare – as in any other place where people sleep – beddings are used for hygiene reasons. Problems with spreading of bacteria diseases such as multi resistant bacteria (MRSA) and various other diseases have pushed companies like Cellcomb i Karlstad AB to develop disposable beddings in order to prevent this. These disposable beddings are protected with a biofilm which serves as a barrier, preventing liquids to pass through. The problem is that there is not much information about how these beddings perform from an environmental perspective. At present, hospitals are using traditional beddings for their patients and are then transported to laundries for washing. This is an energy intensive process and as an alternative, disposable beddings could be used. A simplified LCA was used to find out if beddings made out of cotton and polyester or disposable beddings made out of polypropylene or a viscose material called Tencel was the most favourable from an environmental perspective. To achieve this, various study visits were performed along with a literature study and data collection from companies. The results showed that for a basic case performed with Centralsjukhuset i Karlstad the washable beddings used less energy than Tencel and negligibly less energy than polypropylene. Several case studies were performed in order to examine how different data could alter the results. The case studies showed that which of the alternatives became the most favourable varied depending on the case, especially regarding which kind of energy was being used in the laundry. The disposable beddings made out of Tencel proved to be the best alternative regarding the use of renewable energy, followed by the washable beddings and last polypropylene. From a perspective of eco toxicity and water use both of the disposable beddings turned out more favourable. Two conclusions could be drawn from this study: the alternatives are equally favourable regarding energy use, renewable energy use and the case studies that were performed, but the disposable beddings are more preferable concerning eco toxicity and water use. The second conclusion is that the results depend on which case is studied. An expanded study could be performed using more environmental parameters.

Els pesticides són àmpliament utilitzats en l'agricultura per protegir els cultius en front de plagues, malalties i males herbes, i millorar, per tant, la productivitat i reduir pèrdues en les etapes de cultiu i emmagatzematge. En els darrers anys, en els estudis d'anàlisi de cicle de vida (ACV) s'han assolit avenços significatius pel que fa a l'avaluació de l'ús de pesticides en agricultura. S’han desenvolupat una gran varietat de metodologies per quantificar els impactes degut a aquest ús sobre la salut humana, així com en els ecosistemes implicats. La inclusió d'impactes de toxicitat degut a l’ús pesticides es troba compromesa per importants inconsistències entre les fases de l'anàlisi d'inventari (ICV) i la d'avaluació d'impactes, comportant un repte en l’ACV per poder avaluar i comparar tractaments fitosanitaris. És així com aquesta tesi busca contribuir, des del marc de l'ACV, en el desenvolupament de metodologies quantitatives per avaluar emissions i impactes en la toxicitat d'ecosistemes ocasionats per l'ús de pesticides. Un dels principals reptes en l’ACVs d’agricultura, és el modelatge de fraccions d'emissió de pesticides per ICVs. En general, existeixen diversos enfocaments i suposicions per estimar dites emissions, però solen ser poc consistents i difícilment comparables entre sí. Aquest tema és abordat en aquest estudi, tot avaluant la influència del model d’emissions seleccionat en la preparació dels inventaris de diferents sistemes de cultiu. A més, es proposa una estimació rutinària simplificada per al càlcul de les fraccions d'emissió de pesticides. Els límits entre l'inventari d'emissions de pesticides i l'avaluació d'impactes tenen una influència considerable en l'estimació dels impactes d’ecotoxicitat. En aquest sentit, aquest estudi contempla una sèrie de recomanacions per la preparació d’inventaris d'emissions de pesticides i d’avaluació d'impactes, per poder emmarcar una interfície apropiada per modelar l'inventari, i caracteritzar l'avaluació d'impactes evitant possibles superposicions temporals. Una altra limitació metodològica, en el marc dels estudis d’ACV, associada als impactes d'ecotoxicitat provocats per l'ús de pesticides, es troba en l’avaluació dels fungicides inorgànics. Aquest problema és abordat amb la quantificació d'impactes d’ecotoxicitat en aigua superficial produïts per l'ús de fungicides cúprics. Aquests, a la vegada, són comparats en un cas d'estudi puntual, front els fungicides sintètics més comuns emprats contra el míldiu. L’ecotoxicitat dels sòls es va estudiar en relació a les característiques químiques i estructurals (textures) d’aquests. Per incorporar la diferenciació espacial (un dels aspectes crítics per descriure els efectes tòxics de substàncies metàl·liques) en l'anàlisi d'ecotoxicitat, es van avaluar tres escenaris d'aplicació en set arquetips d'aigua a Europa considerant més de 15000 sòls. Donada la complexitat i variabilitat dels potencials escenaris d’aplicació de pesticides i amb l’objectiu de simplificar i facilitar llur avaluació s'han establert escenaris agrícoles típics. Per a això, es defineixen combinacions específiques de tipus de pesticides, cultius i mètodes d'aplicació de manera que sigui possible estimar les fraccions d'emissió a nivell global per l'ACV. Aquesta tasca es va desenvolupar en el marc de l'esforç internacional de consens per pesticides. Els resultats d'aquesta tesi demostren la importància de considerar l'ús de pesticides en l'avaluació de l’ecotoxicitat per a producció agrícola. A més, representen una millora significativa pel que fa a les metodologies per quantificar fraccions d'emissió de pesticides, així com en la determinació dels impactes d'aquests sobre diferents ecosistemes dins el marc de l'ACV. Dins de les línies a continuar a partir d'aquesta investigació, es pot considerar la inclusió de metabòlits de pesticides en l'avaluació d'impactes de toxicitat; avançar en el desenvolupament de factors de caracterització per a considerar l'ecotoxicitat en sòls, i una millor avaluació de l’impacte dels metalls pesants existent en les entrades agrícoles (ex. Fertilitzants).
Los pesticidas son sustancias ampliamente utilizadas en la agricultura para la protección de los cultivos. En los últimos años, la herramienta de evaluación ambiental, análisis de ciclo de vida (ACV) ha alcanzado avances significativos en cuanto a las estimaciones de impactos de pesticidas y diversas metodologías se han desarrollado para este fin. Sin embargo, existen todavía limitaciones metodológicas e inconsistencias que dificultan una correcta estimación de impactos por el uso de pesticidas en ACV. La inclusión de impactos de toxicidad por el uso de pesticidas se ve afectada por importantes inconsistencias entre el análisis de inventario (ICV) y la evaluación de impactos (EICV), lo cual conlleva un reto en ACV para poder valorar y comparar diferentes sistemas agrícolas. Es así como esta tesis busca contribuir, desde el marco del ACV, a la mejora de metodologías cuantitativas para evaluar emisiones e impactos en la toxicidad de ecosistemas ocasionados por el uso de pesticidas. Uno de los principales retos en ACV respecto a sistemas agrícolas, es la modelización de fracciones de emisión de pesticidas para el ICV. Existe una gran diversidad de enfoques para estimar dichas emisiones, los cuales suelen ser inconsistentes y difícilmente comparables entre sí. Este aspecto es abordado mediante la evaluación de la influencia de diferentes modelos de emisiones en el inventario. Además, se propone una estimación simplificada para el cálculo de las fracciones de emisión de pesticidas aplicados. El delineamiento entre el ICV y EICV han resultado tener una influencia considerable en la estimación de impactos de ecotoxicidad. En este sentido, este estudio toma en cuenta las recomendaciones más recientes sobre ICV y EICV de pesticidas, para proponer una interface apropiada para modelar el inventario, así como para la caracterización de impactos evitando posibles superposiciones temporales. Otra de las limitaciones metodológicas asociadas con impactos de ecotoxicidad provocados por el uso de pesticidas, es la inclusión de fungicidas inorgánicos, principalmente compuestos que incluyen metales. Este problema es abordado con la cuantificación de impactos de ecotoxicidad en agua superficial producidos por el uso de fungicidas a base de cobre. Estos, a su vez, son comparados en un caso de estudio, frente a los fungicidas sintéticos más comunes empleados contra mildiu. La ecotoxicidad del suelo fue caracterizada en relación a las características químicas y texturas de éstos. Para incorporar diferenciación espacial (uno de los aspectos críticos para describir los efectos tóxicos de sustancias metálicas) en el análisis de ecotoxicidad, se evaluaron tres escenarios de aplicación en siete arquetipos de agua y considerando más de 15000 suelos europeos. Dada la complejidad y variabilidad de los escenarios de aplicación de pesticidas y con el objetivo de simplificar y facilitar su evaluación, se han establecido una serie de arquetipos. Para ello, se definen combinaciones de pesticidas, cultivos y métodos de aplicación de modo que sea posible estimar las fracciones de emisión de pesticidas a nivel global para ACV. Esta tarea se desarrolla en el marco del esfuerzo internacional de consenso para pesticidas. Los resultados de esta tesis demuestran la importancia de considerar el uso de pesticidas en la evaluación de ecotoxicidad en agricultura. Representando una mejora significativa en cuanto a las metodologías para cuantificar fracciones de emisión de pesticidas, así como en la determinación de los impactos de éstos sobre distintos ecosistemas enmarcado en ACV. Dentro de las líneas a continuar a partir de esta investigación, se puede considerar la inclusión de metabolitos de pesticidas en la evaluación de impactos de toxicidad; avance en el desarrollo de factores de caracterización para considerar la ecotoxicidad en suelos, y una mejor evaluación de la emisión de metales provenientes de los insumos agrícolas (ej. Fertilizantes).
Pesticides are applied to agricultural fields to protect and control crops from pests, disease and undesired weeds, to increase crop productivity and reduce blemishes, and their global use is substantial. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a standardized methodology that can be applied to assess the environmental performance of different product and systems. In LCA, significant advances associated with the evaluation of the agricultural use of pesticides have been made during the past few years, and several approaches have been developed for taking the impacts of pesticide use on human health and ecosystems into account. However, including toxicity-related impacts for pesticide use in LCA is still associated with methodological limitations. Furthermore, considerations for assessing pesticides are currently affected by significant inconsistencies between the life cycle inventory analysis (LCI) and the impact assessment (LCIA) phases of LCA, and this poses as a practical challenge. This thesis, hence, aims to contribute, within the LCA framework, towards the improvement of consistent quantitative methodologies to assess emission fractions and ecosystem toxicity impacts of pesticide use. One of the main challenges in LCA for agriculture is modeling pesticide emission fractions for the inventory analysis; there are very different approaches and assumptions to provide emission estimates, leading to inconsistent and non-comparable results. This challenge is addressed by testing the influence of the inventory model choice on the environmental performance profiles of different cropping systems. Furthermore, a simplified estimation routine for pesticide emission fractions is proposed, allowing practitioners to include the agricultural field on the assessment. The delineation between pesticide emission inventory and impact assessment has shown to have considerable influence on the estimation of ecotoxicity impacts; in this regard, this study takes advantage of the latest recommendations for pesticide emission inventory and impact evaluation, to frame a suitable interface for LCI modeling and LCIA characterization avoiding possible temporal overlaps. Another methodological limitation associated with ecotoxicity impacts of pesticide use is how to account for inorganic fungicides in LCA studies involving agricultural systems. To address this, freshwater ecotoxicity impacts of copper-based fungicides were quantified and compared with the most common synthetic fungicides used against downy mildew on a practical case study. Soil ecotoxicity was characterized for specific soil chemistries and textures. To introduce spatial differentiation (critical aspect to describe the toxic effects of metal-based substances) in the ecotoxicity assessment, 7 European water archetypes and more than 15000 soils in three different application scenarios were evaluated. To capture the complexity and variability of agricultural practices, while simplifying and facilitating the assessment for pesticide application, a series of archetype scenarios was stablished. These define specific combinations of pesticide target classes, crops and application methods, intended to estimate global emission fractions of pesticides in LCA. This task was conducted in the frame of the LCA pesticide consensus building effort. Finally, the consensual recommendations for simplification and aggregation across conditions are presented and illustrated with a practical example conducted as part of the present thesis. Results in this thesis demonstrate the importance of considering pesticide use for ecotoxicity assessment in agricultural production and represents a relevant step towards methodological advances in quantifying pesticide emission fractions and their related potential impacts on ecosystems within the LCA framework. Among important follow-up lines of research, future work should focus on the inclusion of pesticide metabolites in the assessment of toxic impacts, the development of characterization factors to account for soil ecotoxicity and the further inclusion of metal emissions from agricultural practices (e.g., application of pesticides, manure and chemical fertilizers) into LCA.

Die vorliegende Ausgabe beschäftigt sich mit dem Thema „Erstellung einer Sachbilanz-Studie und Modellierung des Lebensweges von Operationstextilien". Das Ergebnis der Sachbilanz ist, dass die Mehrwegtextilien, im Vergleich zu den Einwegtextilien, einen geringeren Stoff- und Energiefluss erzeugen. Die Modellierung der Lebenszyklen ist in der Software Umberto vorgenommen. Sie visualisiert die Stoffflüsse zwischen den einzelnen Modulen des Lebensweges sehr gut. Es konnte verdeutlicht werden, dass der Wasserfluss der mengenmäßig größte Stoffstrom ist. Die größten Wasserverbräuche werden bei den Mehrwegtextilien in der Wäscherei und der Textilveredlung getätigt; bei den Einwegtextilien sind dies hingegen die Textilveredlung und die Kunststoffherstellung. Als Ergebnis der gesamten Überlegungen wird festgehalten, dass die erstellte Sachbilanz einen guten Hinweis auf die Umweltverträglichkeit der OP-Textilien gibt. Eine anschließende Ökobilanz, aufbauend auf den gewonnenen Daten, könnte die ermittelten Ergebnisse bestätigen.

Afin d’accompagner les acteurs des filières viticoles, notamment d’AOC, dans la nécessaire amélioration de l’éco-efficience de leurs produits, nous avons voulu identifier dans quelles conditions l’Analyse du Cycle de Vie est une méthode appropriée à l'évaluation environnementale des itinéraires techniques viticoles (ITKv) de production de raisins de qualité, à l’échelle parcellaire, afin de pouvoir choisir les plus performants. Pour établir et tester un cadre méthodologique de l’ACV, adapté à cet objectif, des ITKv réels et variés visant un même objectif qualitatif sont nécessaires. Nous proposons ici une chaîne de traitement d’enquête originale, Typ-iti, qui permet le choix de cas réels représentant chaque groupe. Cinq groupes ont ainsi été identifiés parmi les ITKv de production de raisins de Chenin blanc pour vins blancs secs d’AOC en Moyenne Vallée de la Loire, dont trois en viticulture conventionnelle et deux en viticulture biologique. Cinq cas réels ont été choisis pour les représenter. L’ACV est ici déclinée pour la viticulture sur la base de ces cinq cas, par l’établissement d’un cadre méthodologique qui comprend : i) la définition de limites du système incluant les phases non productives et productives, ii) le choix des modèles disponibles les plus pertinents, pour le calcul des émissions directes de polluants à la vigne, iii) l’adaptation fine du modèle d’émissions de pesticides organiques Pest LCI 2.0 aux spécificités viticoles, iv) la proposition et le test d’unités fonctionnelles basées sur un indicateur de qualité du raisin original permettant la prise en compte de la qualité dans les ACV de raisins destinés à la production de vins de qualité. L’ACV a révélé, à l’échelle parcellaire, i) des éco-efficiences contrastées pour les cinq ITKv contrastés, ii) les pratiques responsables de ces contrastes, iii) des solutions d’amélioration et leurs effets quantifiés sur les performances environnementales. La généricité des résultats de ces cas aux groupes qu’ils représentent varie selon l’homogénéité des groupes et avec les catégories d’impacts selon qu’elles sont, ou non, conditionnées par le milieu. L’effet important du millésime sur les résultats, mis en évidence ici sur un cas, mérite d’être pris en compte dans toute ACV viticole. De nombreuses perspectives d’améliorations méthodologiques sont discutées ici pour accroître la pertinence et la complétude des résultats ainsi que la généricité de la méthode et pour son application auprès d’acteurs du développement des filières viticoles
In order to contribute to the effort of eco-efficiency improvement of the wine sctor, especially in the Protected Denomination of Origin (PDO) contaxt, we worked to identify in which conditions Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an appropriate method for environmental assessment, at plot scale, of quality vineyard Technical Management Routes (TMRs), to permit the choice of the most eco-efficient technical operations and TMRs.A methodological framework for LCA suited to this objective was designed and tested on five real and contrasted TMRs, oriented towards a same qualitative objective. These cases were chosen thanks to an original statistical analysis chain, Typ-iti, on the basis of a survey, among the TMRs producing Chenin blanc grapes for PDO dry white wines in the Middle Lore Valley. Five groups were identified and characterized, threee in conventional viticulture, and two in organic viticulture.The methodological framework that was established includes i) the studied system definition including productive and non-productive phases, ii) the choice of the most suitable and available models for calculation of pollutant direct emissions in the vineyard, iii) the customization of the organic pesticide emision calculation model, Pest LCI 2.0, to viticulture specific needs iv) the inclusion of grape quality in the LCA by two functional units including an original grape quality index.LCA proves to be a method complex but powerful, usable at parcel scale for grape production TMRs choice. It revealed i) contrasted eco-efficiencies for the 5 contrasted TMRs, ii) the viticultural practices responsible for these contrasts, iii) solutions for eco-efficiency improvement and quantification of their eco-efficiency effects.The important effect of the production year on the results, highlighted here on one case, must be taken into account in any viticulture LCA. Numerous perspectives of methodological improvement are discussed here in order to increase relevance and completeness of the results as well as genericity of the method and its accessibility for viticulture development stakeholders

A Avaliação do Ciclo de Vida (ACV) é uma ferramenta da gestão ambiental que identifica os aspectos ambientais e avalia os impactos ambientais associados aos produtos, durante todo o seu ciclo de vida, em outras palavras, do berço ao túmulo. O ciclo de vida inicia-se quando todos os recursos requeridos (sejam eles materiais ou energéticos) para a manufatura de determinado produto são extraídos da natureza e finaliza-se após o cumprimento da função pelo produto, retornando ao meio ambiente. Devido à quantidade de dados que necessita ser coletada, um estudo de Avaliação do Ciclo de Vida somente torna-se viável caso exista a disponibilidade de um banco de dados nacional constituído por inventários do ciclo de vida dos principais insumos empregados pela sociedade - matérias primas, energia, etc. Estes inventários possuem caráter de regionalidade e representatividade, podendo tornar novos estudos mais completos, confiáveis e fáceis de serem concluídos. A ACV vem assumindo uma importância a nível global, o Brasil vem se aprimorando na capacitação e uso desta técnica. O GP2 - Grupo de Prevenção da Poluição do Departamento de Engenharia Química da Escola Politécnica da USP, tem como seu principal objetivo a contribuição para o aprimoramento de recursos humanos necessários e consolidação do uso da ACV no Brasil. Desse modo, as atividades do GP2 têm se concentrado na construção de um banco de dados que deve ser adequado, obrigatoriamente, às condições regionais. O presente estudo está inserido nessa linha de pesquisa e tem como propósito a elaboração do Inventário do Ciclo de Vida (ICV) para o papel offset produzido no Brasil. O papel offset pertence a categoria de papéis de imprimir e, atualmente, representa o tipo de papel mais produzido no país. O resultado deste estudo consiste em um inventário consolidado dos aspectos ambientais considerados significativos para a produção da madeira, a extração da celulose, a fabricação do papel offset e outros subsistemas associados, sob as condições tecnológicas típicas dominantes no Brasil. A qualidade do estudo está intrinsecamente ligada à cadeia produtiva do papel offset, que se baseou primordialmente em dados primários. Os resultados do estudo mostraram-se coerentes com um estudo parcial realizado no Chile. Uma análise mais apurada para os resultados encontrados no estudo, com base em pesquisas internacionais, não se fez necessária, considerando as diferenças tecnológicas e de matérias-primas empregadas no ciclo de vida do papel de outros países.
The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool for the environmental management which identifies its aspects and evaluates its environmental impacts related to the products during its whole life cycle. In other words, a cycle that goes from cradle to grave. The life cycle begins when all the required resources (material or energetic) to manufacture a certain product are extracted from the nature and it ends after accomplishing its function, returning to the environment. Due to the amount of data to be collected, a study of the life cycle assessment is only viable in case there is a national data base available formed by inventories of the main input used by the society, such as raw material, energy, and so on. These inventories have a regional and representative character, allowing new studies to be fuller, more reliable and easier to be concluded. The LCA has taken on a world wise importance. Brazil has been improving its competence and usage of such technique. The GP2 - Preventing Pollution Group from the Chemical Engineering Department of Escola Politécnica at USP - has as its primal objective the contribution to an improvement of necessary Human Resources and the consolidation of the LCA usage. In this manner, GP2 activities have to be focused on a data base construction, which should be compulsorily adequate to the regional conditions. The present study is inserted in such line of research and has as its purpose the elaboration on a Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) for the offset paper made in Brazil. The offset paper belongs to the printing paper category and, lately, represents the most used type of paper in this country. The result of such study consists in a solid inventory of the environmental aspects considered meaningful for wood production, cellulose extraction, offset paper manufacture and other related subsystems under typical predominant technological conditions in Brazil. The quality of this study is significantly related to the production chain of the offset paper, which was based mainly on primary data. The results of this study showed to be coherent to the ones achieved in a Chilean study, even though they were partial results. A more refined analysis on the pursued results in the study, based on international researches, isn't necessary, considering the technological differences and raw material used in the paper life cycle in other countries.

Dans le domaine du « Supply Chain Management » la source principale d’incertitude est la demande future. L’impact de l’incertitude de lademande sur les performances de la « Supply Chain » est important: par exemple, le taux mondial de rupture de stock, dans l’industrie dedistribution était en 2007 de 8. 3%. De l’autre côté, le taux mondial de produits invendus, dans la grande distribution, était en 2003 de 1%. Ces deux types de coûts, qui sont dus essentiellement à l’incertitude de la demande, représentent des pertes significatives pour lesdifférents acteurs de la « Supply Chain ». Dans cette thèse, on s’intéresse au développement de modèles mathématiques de planification de production et de gestion de stock, quiprennent en compte ce phénomène d’incertitude sur la demande, essentiellement pour de produits à court cycle de vie. On proposeplusieurs modèles de planification de production, à petit horizon de planification, qui prennent en compte les différents aspects de notreproblématique, telles que la remise à jour des prévisions de la demande et les options de retour « Payback » des produits. On souligne,dans ces modèles, un aspect important qui prend de l’ampleur à cause de la mondialisation, et qui est lié à la différence entre les coûtsde production des différents fournisseurs. . On propose à la fin de la thèse, un modèle généralisé qui pourrait être appliqué à des produitsà long cycle de vie, et qui exploite quelques résultats obtenus pour les produits à court cycle de vie. Tous ces modèles sont résolusanalytiquement ou bien numériquement en utilisant la programmation dynamique stochastique
In the Supply Chain Management domain, the main source of randomness is the future demand. The influence of this demand variabilityon the performance of the Supply Chain is very important: for example, in 2007 the global inventory shortage rate in the retail industrywere around 8. 3%. On the other hand, in 2003 the global Unsaleable products cost around 1% in the grocery industry. These two types ofcosts, which are mainly caused by the uncertainty of the future demand, represent important lost for the whole Supply Chain actors. This Ph. D. Dissertation aims at developing mathematical production planning and inventory management models, which take intoconsideration the randomness of the future demand in order to reduce its economic negative impact, essentially for short life cycleproducts. We provide many planning models that consider the main issues of the planning problems, such as the production capacities,the information updating processes, the supply contracts and the advanced capacity reservation in a total costs minimization context. Weconsider in these models some aspects that are not considered in the literature, such as the “Payback” or the return options. Weemphasize also on an important issue that characterize the globalization of the industry, which may be resumed in the difference betweenthe procurement costs of the different suppliers. This issue is considered in the most chapters presenting models for short life cycleproducts and in the last chapter it is generalized to a long life cycle products setting. All the presented models are solved eitheranalytically or numerically using the dynamic stochastic programming

Biodiesel is an alternative fuel that can be made from vegetable oils or animal fat. This study focuses on whether substitution of soy-based biodiesel fuels for petroleum diesel would produce an overall reduction in emissions of selected pollutants. A life cycle inventory model was developed to estimate energy consumption and emissions of selected pollutants and greenhouse gases. Real-world measurements using portable emission measurement system (PEMS) were made for 15 construction vehicles, including five backhoes, four front-end loaders, and six motor graders on both petroleum diesel and soy-based B20 biodiesel. These data are used as the basis for vehicle tailpipe emission factors of CO2, CO, HC, NOx, and PM. The results imply that biodiesel is a promising alternative fuel for diesel, but that there are some environmental trade-offs. Analysis of empirical data reveals that intra-vehicle variability of energy use and emissions is strongly influenced by vehicle activity that leads to variations in engine load, as represented by manifold absolute pressure (MAP). Vehicle-specific models for fuel use and tailpipe emissions were developed for each of the 30 construction vehicle. The time-based regression model has the highest explanatory ability among six models and is recommended in order to predict fuel use and emission rate for diesel-fueled nonroad construction equipment. Representative duty cycles for each type of vehicles were characterized by a frequency distribution of normalized manifold absolute pressure (MAP). In order to assess the variations of fuel use and emissions among different duty cycles, for a given engine, the inter-cycle variability is assessed. In order to assess the variations of fuel use and emissions among engines, for a given duty cycle, the inter-engine variability is assessed. The results indicated time-based inter-cycle and inter-engine variations of fuel use and emissions are significant. Fuel-based emission factors have less variability among cycles and engines than time-based emission factors. Fuel-based emission factors are more robust with respect to inter-engine and inter-cycle variations and are recommended in order to develop an emissions inventory for nonroad construction vehicles. Real-world in-use measurements should be a basis for developing duty cycle correction factors in models such as NONROAD.

The Master´s thesis is structurally divided into the theoretical and practical part. In the theoretical part, the author describes current global environmental issues and the impact of the industry on the environment. The current state of the environmental legislation in mechanical engineering, environmental management systems, and methodologies of an environmental impact assessment are described. The practical part deals with the environmental burden of the snowboard production process according to the LCA method. Life cycle inventory is performed to evaluate individual materials whose production is the most environmentally damaging. At the last stage, possible measures are proposed to reduce the environmental burden.

Various studies have pointed out the growing need to assess the availability of water sources in regions around the world as future forecasts suggest that water demands will increase significantly for agricultural, industrial and human consumption while freshwater resources are being depleted. One such emerging issue is the effect of industrial operations on said resources, specifically from automobiles. With numerous localities experiencing stresses on water availability, key stakeholders - suppliers, automakers, and vehicle end-users - need to better realize the effect vehicle manufacturing, usage, and disposal have on water resources. While efforts to improve the overall environmental performance of vehicles have mainly concentrated on improving technologies, there has also been considerable effort devoted to characterizing the life-cycle performance of the vehicle product system. However, much of this work has focused on energy consumption and carbon emissions while few studies have examined water. The difference between water use versus water consumption were highlighted and the life-cycle water consumption of a gasoline-powered midsize vehicle were analyzed from material extraction through production, use, and final disposition/end of life. This analysis examines each of the phases to determine a carâ s water footprint using data from the EcoInvent Life Cycle Analysis database as well as data collected from literature sources. Although water use is typically metered at the factory level, water consumption (i.e., water lost through evaporation and/or incorporation into a material, part, and/or product) is much harder to quantify. As shown in this thesis, the difference can be an order of magnitude or more because much of the water that goes into the different processes is either reused, recycled, or discharged back to its original source. The use phase of a vehicle has the biggest impact on the overall vehicle water consumption, followed by material production, whereas water consumption for the end of life processing seems to be relatively insignificant. It is also shown that the impact of energy consumption as part of the total water footprint is very large when compared to the other processes given the dependence on water for energy production. The assessment in this thesis represents a life-cycle inventory and serves as an initial benchmark as no previous study has been completed to determine the water consumption for the life of a vehicle, let alone for most other products. The impact of water consumption varies by region and locality, and a differentiation of impact would still be needed to determine whether the water consumption actually happens in water scarce regions or not.

The aim of this thesis is to develop an approach to support prospective environmental decision-making in resource-based industries. The specific focus is on coal-based power generation. The objectives of the approach are that it be able to adequately reflect the environmental burdens arising from primary industries, and to make explicit the trade-offs often encountered in environmental decisions. In addition, it needs to take into account that the context in which the assessment takes place affects data availability and quality significantly, and consequently the certainty with which systems can be evaluated. Resource-based processes typically involve large-scale disruption of the local and regional environments, with imprecise processes and diffuse emissions. The modelling of the environmental performance of such processes therefore raises significant challenges, where many disparate sources of data, available at different levels of aggregation, and over various time intervals, have to be brought together into a coherent assessment. An "uncertain" definition of the system is therefore much more meaningful, in which variables are defined over ranges of values to cover inconsistencies and imbalances in the system. The inherently high variability of mining and minerals processes further supports their modelling as ranges of potential performance rather than "typical" operations, where the relevant process of interest must be identified and the variability within the particular process incorporated into the assessment Life cycle assessment (LeA) has received increasing attention for its role in environmental decision making processes, where it supports the process of defining the contribution of human activities to (at least the environmental dimension of) sustainable development. It is therefore the structured approach to environmental decision-making investigated in this thesis to organise the large data sets of varying quality and completeness available around resource-based industries into useful information, able to provide the environmental objective in a decision-making process. LeA is an inherently uncertain procedure in that it combines data sources of varying accuracy and representativeness, and employs subjective judgement in applying this data to future operating systems. Subjective judgements are also present in the definition of the systems, and in the modelling choices determining the accuracy and complexity of the inventory and impact models used. Nonetheless, LeA results are most often presented as single values, which in a comparative analysis, gives the often incorrect impression that one system is always better or worse than another system. A framework has been developed in this thesis to include all relevant sources of uncertainty encountered in LCA models explicitly, where empirical parameter uncertainty, model parameter uncertainty, and uncertainty in model form are investigated in a looped fashion. The innermost loop assesses empirical uncertainty in an iterative probabilistic analysis, using Latin Hypercube sampling of the uncertain input distributions to propagate the data uncertainty to the output, and rank-order correlation analyses to determine the relative uncertainty importance of the parameters input into the model. Model parameter uncertainty is assessed next, by a parametric analysis, or by a combination of sensitivity analyses and a parametric analysis, if a large number of model parameters require consideration. The top-most layer is an assessment of model form, in which alternative model forms are investigated in a sensitivity analysis.

Vaswani, Sudeep. Development of Models for Calculating the Life Cycle Inventory of Methanol by Liquid Phase and Conventional Production Processes. (Under the direction of Drs. Morton A. Barlaz and H. Christopher Frey).This study deals with the development of an ASPEN PLUS process model for the liquid phase methanol (LPMEOH) process,which is in the demonstration phase at Eastman Chemical Company, TN. The model will ultimately be integrated with MSW gasification model being modeled separately and used inan integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) system to co-produce methanol and power from syngas obtained from MSWgasification. The LPMEOH process uses syngas as a startingmaterial for methanol production. Model results for anexample case are presented and the life cycle inventory (LCI) of methanol has been calculated starting from syngas. When methanol is produced from the LPMEOH process, its production by conventional processes is avoided. Thus, an EXCEL spreadsheet model of methanol production using conventional process has also been developed. This model calculates the LCI of methanol from conventional process which is used to calculate the emissions avoided per kg ofmethanol produced by the LPMEOH process. For LPMEOH process model, it is found that the performance of the model is dependent on syngas conversion in methanol reactor. Syngas conversion is a function of reactor pressure, syngas space velocity in methanol reactor, molar ratio of recycle gases to fresh syngas feed, and H2/CO molar ratio in syngas feed. The syngas composition mainly depends on the source from which it is obtained (e.g. coal gasification, MSW gasification). LPMEOH process model has the capability to process syngas of varying compositions.Sensitivity analysis of LPMEOH process model has been presented. Based on the sensitivity analysis, it is shown that for syngas compositions limited in hydrogen content, the reactor pressure of or higher than 750 psig must be used. Further it is shown that recycling the unreacted gases has an advantage of more methanol production compared to the case with no recycle. It is also shown that the syngas feed with low H2/CO ratio has lower methanol production than syngas with higher H2/CO ratio. It therefore recommended that the syngas with low H2/CO ratio be adjusted via water-gas shift reaction such that the H2/CO ratio increases thereby resulting in a higher methanol production. It is also learnt that net steam demand in the LPMEOH process increases as the syngas becomes limited in its hydrogen content. This is expected to have some implications when the LPMEOH process is combined with an IGCC system. The LCI of methanol produced by LPMEOH process varies widely with change in syngas composition and process conditions such as reactor pressure, space velocity in methanol reactor, and recycle ratio. The main contribution to the LCI occurs from the combustion of purge gases to produce steam in a boiler. The steam generated offsets the emissions from other contributors of the LCI. The sensitivity analysis of the LCI of methanol production from LPMEOH reveals that the methanol LCI is quite sensitive to the changes in syngas composition, reactor pressure, syngas space velocity and the recycle ratio.The sensitivity analysis of conventional methanol production has also been discussed. It is found that the LCI of conventional process is not very sensitive to changes in natural gas composition, which is used as a raw material for methanol production. The change in syngas conversion in methanol reactor also does not cause the overall LCI of methanol to change significantly.The ultimate objective of the study is to compare the LCI of methanol produced by conventional process with that by LPMEOH process to determine if there is any advantage to methanol production by using LPMEOH technology on syngas derived from MSW gasification. The effect of an LPMEOH process on a gasification system would be an incremental increase in fuel use. Because of the incremental fuel use there would be an increase in elemental sulfur recovered, slag production, and some pollutant emissions. However, an overall LCI of methanol for LPMEOH process would require the calculation of the LCI associated with gasification.

The goal of this thesis is to provide the means for discussion of overall benefits of alternative offshore drilling technologies. Life-cycle assessment is used to assess environmental impact of alternative drilling technologies. Life-cycle assessment is well-suited for relative comparison and it offers the broad perspective necessary to evaluate overall performance.

Several methodological developments are made within the framework of life-cycle assessment to support the evaluation of offshore drilling fluid technology.

Offshore discharges to the marine environment during drilling operations are pulse emissions. The relative marine aquatic ecotoxic impact of pulse emissions compared to continuous emission processes is investigated by transient dispersion modeling.

Occupational health is an important decision objective for offshore operations. Crane-lifts are an important cause of accidents with human health damages on drilling rigs. A characterization factor for offshore crane-lifts is developed to include occupational health in life-cycle assessment.

Long-term release of metals from solid wastes is important for the ecotoxicity of drilling wastes. A review is presented that considers the current and possible solutions to address long-term leaching processes in life-cycle assessment.

An overall evaluation of offshore drilling fluid technology is performed. The study assesses the relative life-cycle performance of alternatives for density control in drilling fluids (ilmenite versus barite), offshore loading systems (crane-lifts versus a hydraulic system), base drilling fluids (water-base versus oil-base), and waste treatment of cuttings drilled with water-based drilling fluid (offshore discharge versus onshore treatment). A well located in the Barents Sea is used as reference.

Results are interpreted using Monte Carlo simulation. Preferred alternatives from an overall evaluation are proposed.

This thesis illustrates the challenges of life-cycle assessment. Most product systems require adaptation and development of methods for proper evaluation of impacts and results that meet requirements for decision objective attributes.

An in-house life cycle inventory (LCI) database for British Columbia (BC) wood pellets is established. The LCI database is used to compare the performance of BC pellets exported to Rotterdam and BC pellets staying within BC in terms of energy penalty, percent of fossil fuel content in pellets arriving destination, and impacts (human health, ecosystem quality and climate change) by performing life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) in a commercial LCA software. The database is also utilized to assess two domestic applications of BC wood pellets: replacing natural gas combustion in UBC district heating facility with wood waste or wood pellet gasification, and replacing firewood in BC residential heating with wood pellets. Overall, the analysis indicated that marine transportation is responsible for over 40% of the life cycle energy consumption and more than 50% of each of the impact categories investigated. The energy penalty and fossil fuel content of exported pellets are roughly 50% and 90% higher than that of the non-exported pellets. For the district heating case study, the base scenario performs much better than all biomass gasification systems in all impact categories other than climate change. The saving in GHG emission is approximately 81% if woody biomasses are utilized. Over the entire life cycle, controlled wood waste gasification system performs better than controlled wood pellet gasification system due to the extra processing required for wood pellets. However, when looking at the health impact associated with stack emissions only, controlled wood pellet gasification would raise the health impact by 12% from the base case while controlled wood waste gasification would raise the impact by 133%. By switching from firewood to wood pellets for BC residential heating, the primary energy consumption and impacts on human health, ecosystem quality and climate change can be reduced by 34%, 95%, 27% and 17%, respectively. Over 90% reduction in external costs can also be achieved. In terms of economic viability, when bulk pellets are to be utilized, switching from firewood to pellet units would be reasonable as long as the unit to be replaced is not a fireplace insert.

In the past three decades, textile fiber production has grown more than twofold, reflecting an increasing demand for both fossil and natural resources (Turley et. al., 2009, p.9) resulting in the intensification of environmental impacts such as water scarcity, abiotic depletion, and toxic pollution. Although potentially disruptive technology such as three-dimensional printing (3DP) can eliminate entire supply chain components and potentially reduce energy and water in textile and apparel production, 3DP as an application for clothing production is still at its nascent stage of development––the world’s first 3D-printed garment being created only in 2010. As prevention is preferable to mitigation, it is timely to examine key environmental impacts of potentially disruptive technology in advance of its proliferation. By using environmental management tools such as ISO14044:2006 and the life cycle inventory analysis (LCI) method to identify hotspots for two key impact areas––water and energy consumption––of prevalent 3D printing methods versus that of the conventional cut-and-sew method in clothing production, environmental sustainability parameters can then be established to target underperforming areas and improve the design, manufacture, use, and disposal of future garments. Using one standard T-shirt as a functional unit, this meta-life cycle inventory analysis will compare the energy and water demands of using three main AM techniques––selective laser sintering (SLS), fused deposition modeling (FDM), and field guided fabrication (FGF)––against that of using the conventional cut-and-sew method to create one standard T-shirt out of six most representative materials.

A Avaliação do Ciclo de Vida (ACV) é uma ferramenta da gestão ambiental que identifica aspectos ambientais e avalia os impactos ambientais de um produto ao longo de todo o seu ciclo de vida. O ciclo de vida considera todas as atividades que vão desde a extração e processamento das matérias-primas, manufatura, transporte, distribuição, uso, reuso, manutenção e disposição final. Através da ACV são obtidas todas as entradas de massa e energia e as respectivas saídas na forma de emissões atmosféricas, efluentes líquidos e resíduos sólidos para cada atividade que compõe o ciclo de vida do produto estudado. No desenvolvimento da ACV, durante a fase de coleta de dados existe uma enorme quantidade de informações que necessita ser coletada. Para sanar essa dificuldade, vêm sendo desenvolvidos bancos de dados de insumos de grande importância os quais possuem características regionais, tornando o estudo mais completo e confiável. A utilização de bancos de dados tem caráter apenas regional, visto que as condições técnicas e ambientais podem variar de uma região para outra. Dependendo da região, a utilização de bancos de dados internacionais tende a distorcer os resultados dos estudos de ACV, conduzindo a resultados não adequados, os quais não representam a realidade da região em estudo. Neste contexto, o Grupo de Prevenção da Poluição do Departamento de Engenharia Química da Escola Politécnica da USP tem desenvolvido estudos que visam à obtenção de Inventários do Ciclo de Vida (ICVs) para auxiliar na construção de um banco de dados brasileiro. O presente estudo, inserido nessa linha de pesquisa, visa à construção do inventário do ciclo de vida do biodiesel etílico do óleo de girassol produzido no Brasil. O biodiesel é um combustível renovável constituído de uma mistura de monoalquilésteres de ácidos graxos de cadeia longa, derivados de óleos vegetais, gorduras animais ou óleos residuais. Neste estudo, definiu-se o sistema de produto para o biodiesel, o qual dividiu-se em subsistemas para facilitar a coleta de dados. Os dados coletados para cada um dos subsistemas foram predominantemente secundários, isto é, obtidos de publicações científicas e bases de dados estrangeiras. No entanto, os dados secundários foram adaptados à realidade brasileira, por meio de informações e considerações que consideraram as condições tecnológicas e de mercado existentes no Brasil. Como resultado verificou-se que 8 dentre todas as etapas do ciclo de vida do biodiesel, a produção dos grãos de girassol é a que demanda mais recursos materiais e energéticos e que provoca a maior quantidade de emissões para o meio ambiente. Deste modo, na produção do biodiesel deve ser dada atenção especial para a produção da oleaginosa, buscando soluções quanto ao seu alto consumo de recursos e emissões para o meio ambiente.
The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool of the environmental management which identifies environmental aspects and evaluates environmental impacts of products during its whole life cycle. The life cycle considers all the activities since the extraction and manufacture of the raw materials, transport, distribuction, use, reuse, maintenance and final disposal. Through the LCA are obtained all the inputs of mass and energy and the respective outputs of atmospheric emissions, liquid effluents and solid wastes for every activity of the product life cycle studied. In the development of the LCA, during the phase of data collection there is a vast quantity of information to be collected. To avoid this difficulty, have been in development databases of important inputs, who has regional characteristics, becoming the study more complete and reliable. The database utilization has only a regional character, since the technical and environmental conditions can change in different regions. Depending of the region, the utilization of international database tends to distort the results of an LCA study, leading non adequate results, which don´t represent the reality of the region in study. In this context, de Pollution Prevention Group (GP2) of the Chemical Engineering Department of Polytechnic School of USP have developed studies that aims to obtain Life Cycle Inventories (LCI) to assist the construction of a Brazilian database. The present study is inserted in such line of research and aims to the construction of the sunflower oil ethylic biodiesel LCI made in Brazil. The biodiesel is a renewable fuel, it is constituted of a mix of mono alkyl esters of long chain fatty acids derived of vegetable oils, animal fats or residual oils. In this study was defined the product system to biodiesel, which was divided in subsystems to assist the data collection. The data were collected for each one of the subsystems were in the majority secondary, obtained of scientific publications and foreign databases. However, the secondary data were adapted to the brazilian reality through informations and considerations that take into account the actual brazilian technological and market conditions. As a result it was verified that among all the steps of the biodiesel life cycle, the agricultural production of the sunflower is that one who demands more energetic and materials inputs and is responsible for the majority of the emissions to the environment. In this way, in the biodiesel production should 10 be given special attention to the agricultural production of the oilseed, searching for solutions to its high consumption of inputs and environmental emissions.

Les services de distribution d’eau utilisent différentes ressources (eaux de surface et eaux souterraines), y compris une utilisation accrue de ressources alternatives (eau dessalée, eau réutilisée, transferts d'eau entre bassins) pour alimenter les différents utilisateurs (domestiques, agricoles, industriels, etc.). La combinaison de ces ressources en eau avec des technologies (incluant infrastructures, fonctionnement et énergie) donne lieu à une combinaison régionale d'approvisionnement en eau (WSmix) pour chaque utilisation spécifique. Actuellement, les bases de données existantes d'inventaire du cycle de vie (ICV) utilisées en Analyse du Cycle de Vie (ACV) ne proposent pas ce type de données relative aux WSmix régionalisées pour modéliser des processus. Ceci conduit à une représentation médiocre des systèmes d'approvisionnement en eau et des impacts environnementaux associés. Pour combler cette lacune, cette thèse développe (i) un cadre conceptuel cohérent de mix d'approvisionnement en eau (WSmix) pour la mise en oeuvre en ACV, (ii) une base de données opérationnelle incluant le mix de ressource en eau pour différents utilisateurs à l'échelle mondiale adossée à une matrice dite « technologique » associant chaque ressource à des technologies de production d'eau. Afin de tester en ACV l'opérationnalisation et l'applicabilité du mix WSmix à l'échelle mondiale et pour différents utilisateurs, le concept de WSmix est appliqué à deux exemples contrastés: un service (fourniture d’un m3 d’eau publique à la porte de l’utilisateur) et un produit global (production d’un kg maïs). Enfin, pour évaluer dans quelle mesure le WSmix sera affecté par les changements climatiques et socio-économiques, cette thèse propose le développement d'un WSmix Prospectif (P-WSmix) pour une mise en oeuvre pratique dans les études d'ACV et d'empreinte sur l'eau
Water utilities draw different water sources (surface and groundwater), including increased use of alternative sources (e.g. desalinated water, reused water, inter-basin water transfers) to supply freshwater to different users (domestic, agriculture, etc.). The combination of water sources and technologies (including infrastructures and energy) results in a regional water supply mix (WSmix) for each specific use. Existing Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) databases used in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), do not include these mixes when modelling processes, leading to a poor representation of water supply systems and related environmental impacts. To fill this gap, this thesis developes 1) consistent water supply mix (WSmix) model for implementation in LCA, 2) a first database of water source mixes for different users at a global scale and a technological matrix linking water sources to water production technologies in order to operationalize the practical implementation of the WSmix in LCA studies. In order to test the operationalization and applicability of the WSmix at worldwide scale and for different users, this theseis also describes the operationalization and application of the WSmix for two different water users worldwide with two different approaches: providing a generic service (public water supply) and producing a global product (maize production). Finally, to evaluate to what extent the WSmix will be affected by climate and socio-economic changes in the future, this thesis describes the development of a Prospective WSmix (P-WSmix) for practical implementation in LCA and water footprint studies

In this thesis, a framework is constructed for a life cycle assessment within a civilengineering project. There are various methods available on how to conduct lifecycle assessments and this thesis explores one method related to civil engineeringworks. The assessment follows the structure based in related standards such asEN 15804 which describes how to declare construction products. A working copyof a possible upcoming European level standard for sustainability assessment ofcivil engineering works is also used in the process. The object of assessment arethe materials, concrete and steel, in the retaining walls that are constructed alongthe channel near Södertälje Harbour. This is a part of a larger project, called theMälar Project.The life cycle of these type of constructions often stretches over long periodsof time which leaves a lot of uncertainties while estimating the impacts during thelater life stages. The research problem is much about how to handle the differentmodules of the life cycle regarding civil engineering works.Example data were collected and presented for each module of the life stage.The results of the example data showed that most of the impact came from theproduct stage. The conclusions are that the collection of data should be an integratedpart in the operating procedures for the company for a more efficientprocess, Environmental Product Declarations are a good source of data and standardson European level gives good guidelines on how to conduct a life cycleassessment for civil engineering projects.
I detta examensarbete konstrueras ett ramverk för hur en livscykelanalys kan utförasinom väg- och vattenbyggnad. Det finns många olika riktlinjer för hur enlivscykelanalys kan utföras och i detta examensarbete utforskas en metod för projektinom väg- och vattenbyggnad. Arbetet följer strukturen ur EN 15804 sombeskriver hur man bedömer byggprodukter. Ett arbetsexemplar av en ny, möjligstandard på Europanivå för miljöbedömning av projekt inom väg- och vatten användsockså i processen. Det som bedöms via livscykelanalys i denna studie är deingående materialen, stål och betong, i hållväggarna som byggs längs med kanalenvid Södertälje Hamn. Detta är en del av ett större projekt, kallat Mälarprojektet.Livscyklerna för denna typ av projekt är oftast väldigt långa vilket skapar enosäkerhet i data då påverkan för senare delar av livscykeln behöver uppskattas.Problematiken som presenteras handlar mycket om hur modulerna för livscykelnska behandlas för denna typ av projekt.Exempeldata samlades in för de olika modulerna och presenterades i tabellersom täcker alla relevanta delar av livscykeln. Resultatet av exempeldatan visadeatt den mesta påverkan kom från produktstadiet. De slutsatser som dras är attinsamlingen av data bör vara en integrerad del av företagets arbetsmetod fören effektiv process, miljödeklarationer är en bra källa till data och standards påEuropanivå ger bra guidelinjer för hur en livscykelanalys kan utföras för liknandeprojekt.

A Análise de Ciclo de Vida (ACV) tem se mostrado uma importante ferramenta de avaliação ambiental, devido à seu enfoque “sobre função”, que permite considerar o desempenho ambiental de produtos, procedimento cada vez mais requerido por diversos atores sociais. Para que a ACV possa ser utilizada de modo amplo e confiável, faz-se necessário que se desenvolvam bases de dados regionalizadas, contendo Inventários de Ciclo de Vida (ICV) dos principais insumos usados pela sociedade- energia, matérias- primas,etc. O presente trabalho faz parte de uma projeto conduzido pelo GP2- Grupo de Prevenção da Poluição, da Escola Politécnica/ USP, de disponibilização de bases brasileiras para ACV, sendo dedicado especificamente à geração de eletricidade. Para permitir sua realização no âmbito de uma dissertação de mestrado, adotou-se como simplificação a geração de eletricidade na usina hidrelétrica de Itaipu, responsável em 2000 por 22,4% da eletricidade consumida no país. Para construir o ICV realizou-se uma revisão bibliográfica sobre o uso da ACV em hidrelétricas, estabelecendo recomendações gerais. A seguir, estudou-se Itaipu quanto à sua obra civil e consumo de insumos na construção e operação por 100 anos, obtendo ao final um ICV com os aspectos ambientais mais significativos em termos da energia gerada (MWh). Neste contexto as fronteiras estabelecidas incluem: escavações e obras de terra; instalação e operação do canteiro de obras; transporte dos operários e de cimento, cinzas, aço estrutural e diesel para a obra; ciclo de vida do aço, cobre, cimento, diesel, óleos lubrificante e de transformador usados na barragem e equipamentos permanentes (considerando inclusive manutenção e substituição); e enchimento do reservatório. Com a discussão dos resultados pode-se demonstrar, além da importância do uso de dados homogêneos, que o ICV é extremamente sensível ao horizonte de análise (na verdade à energia gerada), o que confirma que a construção é a principal origem dos aspectos ambientais significativos. Outra conclusão é que cada hidrelétrica constitui um caso particular, não sendo possível atribuir valores típicos. No entanto, há indícios de que Itaipu, por seu alto fator de capacidade e potência instalada, possua um desempenho ambiental acima da média das hidrelétricas, principalmente no que se refere ao tempo de retorno da energia investida. As estimativas indicam que os processos que mais contribuem aos aspectos ambientais de hidrelétricas sejam: enchimento do reservatório; ciclo de vida do cimento e aço, e operação das máquinas de construção. As etapas de transporte parecem não ser de relevância, ao contrário do consumo de aço nos equipamentos permanentes. Em comparação com a geração termelétrica, as emissões atmosféricas e consumo de água do ciclo de vida de Itaipu se mostraram significativamente menores. No entanto há que se considerar que esta comparação se restringiu a estes aspectos. Ao final, conclui-se que resultados mais precisos sobre aspectos e processos de maior prioridade dependem da condução da etapa de Avaliação de Impactos da ACV, e portanto não se deve utilizar os resultados desta análise de inventário como único critério para tomada de decisões em planejamento energético.
The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been proven to be an important environmental assessment tool, mainly due to its “focus on function”, which allows the consideration of the environmental performance of products, itself a proceeding that has been more and more requested by different social actors. However, for LCA to be widely and trustfully used, the development of local data bases containing Life Cycle Inventories (LCI) of the most used inputs (energy, raw materials, etc.) is necessary. The present thesis is part of a project conducted by GP2- Group of Pollution Prevention - Escola Politécnica/ USP, which aims to develop and make available a Brazilian LCA data base. Specifically, it focuses electricity generation. In order to allow this project to be concluded in a masters degree context, it was adopted as a simplification the electricity generation in Itaipu Hydropower Plant, responsible for 22,4% of Brazilian consumption in 2000. As a first step towards the elaboration of the LCI, a review on LCA use on hydropower plants was conducted, establishing general recommendations. On the following, Itaipu project was studied concerning its initial civil works and the materials consumption on construction and operation within a 100 year period, obtaining as a result a LCI with the most significant environmental burdens in terms of generated energy (MWh). The system boundaries on this context includes: excavations and other earthen works; building site installation and operation; transportation of: workers, cement, ashes, structural steel and diesel; life cycle of steel, copper, cement, diesel, lubricant oil and transformer oil used on the dam and permanent equipment; (including maintenance and substitution); and reservoir filling. The results demonstrate, besides the importance of data homogeneity, that the LCI is extremely sensitive to the considered lifetime, which confirms that the construction phase is the main source of environmental burdens. Another important conclusion is that each hydropower plant is a particular case, and it is not possible to establish typical values for the environmental burdens. However there is an indication that Itaipu has a better environmental performance than other plants, mainly on respect to the energy pay back period, due to its high capacity factor and installed power. According to the estimates, the process which most contributes to the environmental burdens of hydropower plants life cycle are: reservoir filling; steel and cement life cycle; and operation of construction machines. Transport activities are of no relevance, however the steel consumption on permanent equipment is. Compared to thermal power, hydropower life cycle air emissions and water consumption are shown to be significantly lower. This comparison indeed is restricted only to this burdens. Finally, recommendations are presented, in the spirit of refining boundaries in the following studies, and the objectives attained are commented. It should be highlighted that all hypothesis and calculations are located in the Annex volume, being just referenced on the main text.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is revolutionizing business practices across industries worldwide as means for its commercial application continue to be developed. It is surpassing barcoding as the preferred means of product identification due to its’ ability to identify goods at item-level as opposed to batch- or type identification, and with no line-of-sight requirements for item detection. Although many industries have successfully employed the technology and are reaping the rewards, RFID’s adoption in the truck tyre industry is still in its infant stage. A small number of documented cases discuss the limited roll-out and testing of RFID effectiveness in satisfying the demands and expectations associated with this specific application. This study is aimed at evaluating the viability of introducing RFID to the South African market. The market readiness is reflected in the perceptions of Continental Tyre South Africa’s (CTSA’s) customers regarding the perceived benefits of RFID. More importantly, it is revealed in how it affects customers’ buying behaviour and, by implication, the impact on CTSA’s sales. The results of the study also reveal critical aspects unique to the South African truck tyre market which could potentially be addressed through the introduction of RFID. These aspects form the basis of the conclusions and recommendations for future actions by CTSA.

The aim of this research is to explore the sustainability of the existing residential buildings and to analyse how sustainability can be assessed if sustainable materials and technologies would be used. The main objectives are concentrated in providing a general knowledge of sustainability and to examine how much sustainable the residential buildings are. To analyze the various technologies and materials that can be used in order to reduce the climate-altering emissions, to improve energy efficiency, to reduce costs and to improve the living conditions. Providing knowledge and tools for the sustainable re-design of existing buildings, which will be addressed to environmental, technical, economic and social feasibility of proposed measures, and to energy control. For the analysis, different case studies in different countries will be studied and then a life-cycle approach will be applied to a theoretical residential building, and all the relevant impact categories for the selected type of buildings will be taken into account. In order to analyze the sustainability of the building, a qualitative research will be done using literature sources, international database, journal articles, technical and official reports from the government or group researchers patented and SimaPro software. Materials and dimensions will be defined and will be studied the integrated energy performance, CO2 emissions, global warming, acoustic comfort, thermal comfort, indoor environmental quality for existing residential building structures. All these steps will be taken in order to allow an LCA analysis of the materials of the residential buildings and to define when can be considered that the system has actually been sustained.

Sammanfattning Kurs: Examensarbete i Logistik för Civilekonomprogrammet, 30 hp, 4FE19E.  Författare: Jakob Bergman och Jim Andersson. Examinator: Peter Berling Handledare: Peter Berling  Medbedömare: Hana Hulthén Titel: Saldoavvikelser i producerande företag, en fallstudie på Getinge Disinfection AB. Bakgrund: En välfungerande lagerhållning är en väsentlig grundsten för ett företags framgångar. I takt med att lagerhållningen blivit mer automatiserad och effektiviserad ställs högre krav på att informationen om lagersaldon stämmer överens med verkligheten. Saldoavvikelser är ett utbrett problem som kan påverka många olika delar av en verksamhet, såsom felaktiga underlag för inköp, den dagliga driften och företagets servicegrad. Fallföretaget Getinge Disinfection AB upplever främst att saldoavvikelser på företaget får effekt på den dagliga driften, något som denna studie ämnar undersöka. Syfte: Studien syftar till att identifiera konsekvenser och orsaker till saldoavvikelser på Getinge Disinfection AB samt ge förbättringsförslag som kan reducera saldoavvikelser på företaget. Metod: Denna studie har en kvalitativ forskningsstrategi. Vidare är studiens forskningsdesign en fallstudie då den endast undersöker ett fall ingående och detaljerat. Resultat: Studien fann att saldoavvikelser kan uppstå i alla steg i den studerade processen, med varierande primära orsaker i de olika stegen i processen. Bland de konsekvenser som funnits är de främsta icke-värdeskapande aktiviteter, opålitliga underlag för inköpsbeslut, OOS och ökade ledtider. Majoriteten av orsakerna grundar sig i den mänskliga faktorn, det vill säga att anställda inte följer rutiner eller gör misstag i processen. Dessa misstag kan ske i olika aktiviteter i processen och det finns olika primärorsaker beroende på var i processen misstaget sker. Vidare har författarna tagit fram förbättringsförslag för att effektivisera Getinge Disinfection ABs produktionsprocess. De mest lämpliga förbättringsförslagen är att skapa förståelse om saldoavvikelser bland de anställda, införa Cycle counting, digitalisera olika aktiviteter och utvärdera det nuvarande artikelsortimentet. Nyckelord: Saldosäkerhet, Saldoavvikelser, Producerande företag, Medicinteknik, Life Science, Assemble to Order, ATO, Cycle Counting, RFID, Streckkoder.
Abstract  Course: Degree project in Logistics, the Business Administration and Economics Programme, 30 credits, 4FE19E.    Authors: Jakob Bergman and Jim Andersson. Examiner: Peter Berling.  Tutor: Peter Berling. Co-judger: Hana Hulthén Title: Inventory record inaccuracies in manufacturing companies, a case study on Getinge Disinfection AB. Background: Effective inventory management is of considerable importance for most successful businesses. Without it, companies would be hard-pressed to meet the demands of consumers that place a high value on fast deliveries and product availability. As a result, businesses have turned to increased automation of their inventory management. This automation relies heavily on information such as inventory records being accurate and up to date. Inventory record inaccuracies result in purchases or decisions being made on incorrect assumptions of the companies’ actual inventory status, which has a negative effect on many aspects of the business. However, most studies on this subject focus on inventory record inaccuracies in a retailing context, whereas this study focuses on a large manufacturing company (Getinge Disinfection AB) using an Assemble to Order model. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify the different causes and consequences of inventory record inaccuracies (IRI) at Getinge Disinfection AB. Furthermore, the study aims to offer proposals on how to improve inventory record accuracy at Getinge Disinfection AB.    Methodology: This paper adopts a qualitative research strategy with a case-study approach.  Findings: The study concluded that inventory record inaccuracies can arise in all areas of the studied process, with different primary reasons for different stages of the process. Most of the causes of IRI can be attributed to the human factor, such as incorrect identification of the items, unregistered movements of goods, and transaction errors. The consequences of (IRI) were mainly the resulting non-value adding activities, purchasing decisions being made based on unreliable inventory data, stockouts and longer lead times. The study also gives suggestions on how Getinge could reduce these inventory record inaccuracies. Improvement measures such as Cycle counting, bar coding of the items and locations and increased staff training are discussed. Keywords: Inventory Record Accuracy, Inventory Record Inaccuracy, Manufacturing, Health Care, Life Science, Assemble to Order, ATO, Cycle Counting, RFID, Bar coding.

Ce travail est consacré au développement d’un couplage méthodologique entre la méthode d’Analyse de Cycle de Vie (ACV) et un logiciel de génie de procédés (Aspen Plus), en vue d’améliorer la qualité des données de l’Inventaire du Cycle de Vie (LCV) de la filière classique de production d’acier. La nouvelle approche développée est destinée à la réalisation de l’inventaire pour un système défini à partir de modèles physico-chimiques simplifiés. Ainsi, à l’aide du logiciel Aspen Plus, nous avons mis en oeuvre la modélisation de chaque sous-système considéré dans les frontières de la filière classique de production d’acier : cokerie, agglomération, haut fourneau, convertisseur et laminoir à chaud. L’approche de modélisation adoptée a été basée sur des considérations physiques et chimiques et sur des observations expérimentales à l’échelle industrielle et/ou à l’échelle pilote pour chaque sous-système. Les modèles permettent le calcul de la plupart des émissions engendrées par le système : CO2, CO, NO, SO2, COV, HCl, H2S, poussières et métaux lourds ainsi que des déchets. La validation des modèles a été faite par comparaison des résultats calculés avec des mesures expérimentales disponibles pour des sites industriels. De plus, le comportement des modèles a été testé en réalisant des simulations en utilisant une base de données "de référence" définie dans le cadre du projet européen ULCOS (Ultra Low CO2 Steelmaking). Il est montré que cette approche méthodologique assure le contrôle total du bouclage des bilans de matière et d’énergie du système, difficile à réaliser à partir des données provenant exclusivement de mesures industrielles et/ou de la littérature. De plus, le fait que les émissions soient calculées sur des considérations physicochimiques, conduit à donner une forte crédibilité à l’inventaire réalisé
This work was devoted to a new methodological framework, which combines the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method and the process simulation software (Aspen Plus), in order to improve the quality of data used for carrying out the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) of the classical steelmaking route. The new approach adopted in the present work, is to carry out the inventory of the defined system via simplified physical-chemical models. Using Aspen Plus software, we have developed simplified physical-chemical models for each of the subsystem defined by the boundaries of the classical steelmaking route: coking plant, sintering plant, blast furnace, basic oxygen furnace and hot rolling. The modelling strategy was based on physical and chemical considerations and on the experimental observations made on an industrial and/or a pilot scale for each subsystem.The models allow for calculation of the principal pollutants evolved by the system such as CO2, CO, NO, SO2, COV, HCl, H2S, dust, heavy metals and solid waste. The models validation was made by comparing the calculated results with experimental data given by the industrial sites. Furthermore, the maturity of the models was tested through simulations using data coming from the "benchmark" data base defined in the frame of ULCOS project (Ultra Low CO2 Steelmaking).Through the models simulation, it was proved that this methodological framework assures the total control of mass and heat balances of the system which is difficult to achieve when using only data from industry and/or literature. However, the fact that the emissions calculated within the models are based on physical-chemical considerations gives a strong credibility to the life cycle inventory

Cette thèse présente différents développements à la méthode analyse de cycle de vie (ACV) afin d'améliorer le niveau de considération des spécificités spatiotemporelles lors de la modélisation de systèmes. Ces développements abordent la question de la caractérisation des flux décrivant les systèmes. La discussion débute par une analyse des développements récents de la méthode ACV en ce qui concerne la considération des spécificités spatiotemporelles dans les différentes phases de cette méthode. Cette analyse identifie des lacunes quant à la pertinence des modes de caractérisation spatiale et temporelle existants. Un nouveau mode de caractérisation spatiotemporelle est alors pro-posé. La représentativité du système modélisé, le potentiel de précision de la caractérisation et le temps de travail nécessaire à la modélisation de différents systèmes sont trois critères importants qui ont été considérés pour la création de ce nouveau mode de caractérisation spatiotemporelle. Le nouveau mode proposé permet en particulier d'améliorer la généricité des processus définissant des systèmes dans différentes bases de données. Celui-ci permet ainsi de diminuer l'augmentation inévitable du travail lié à la caractérisation temporelle des systèmes. Le nouveau mode de caractérisation temporelle requiert toutefois une modification importante de la méthode de calcul des inventaires cycle de vie en raison de l'utilisation de distributions temporelles. La faisabilité de l'utilisation de ce nouveau mode et de la nouvelle méthode de calcul d'inventaire est ensuite démontrée par leurs mises en œuvre pour différents cas d'études de production d'énergie à partir de sources renouvelables. Les deux cas d'études retenus permettent de souligner l'intérêt d'une telle caractérisation spatiotemporelle accédant ainsi à une modélisation plus représentative des systèmes en fonction du niveau de précision retenu. Avec cette nouvelle approche nommée ESPA+, l'accès à ce niveau de représentativité s'accompagne cependant d'une diminution du potentiel de complétude de l'analyse. En effet, la méthode de calcul permet difficilement de dynamiser la totalité des systèmes modélisés.

La transition énergétique est un enjeu crucial du XXIème siècle, en particulier pour réduire les conséquences néfastes du changement climatique. Cependant, cette transition est sujette à de nombreux risques : économiques, géologiques, sociaux, environnementaux et géopolitiques. Afin de pouvoir évaluer la vulnérabilité et les conditions de faisabilité des scénarios de transition énergétique, il est nécessaire de pouvoir évaluer la chaine de valeur technologique et géographique des technologies impliquées dans le système énergétique.Les outils actuels tels que les analyses de cycle de vie (ACV) permettent de prendre en compte la chaine de valeur technologique, mais les données relatives aux ACV ne fournissent pas ou peu d’information sur la chaine de valeur géographique. Les modèle d’entrées-sorties économiques (IOA), en particulier ceux mutlirégionaux (MRIO), s’ils fournissent des données sur les échanges économiques bilatéraux, donc une estimation des échanges régionalisés, sont des modèles très agrégés. Les nomenclatures des activités économiques et des catégories de produits prisent en compte sont restreintes. Le travail réalisé au sein de cette thèse vise à exploiter les informations des outils ACV et MRIO, profitant des avantages de chacun, c’est à dire l’information technologique des premiers et l’information régionalisée des seconds. Une nouvelle méthodologie est proposée pour régionaliser les inventaires de cycle de vie d’ACV à partir des données MRIO. Cette méthodologie permet, à partir d’une base de données ACV de processus industriels, d’exploiter l’information géographique des processus lorsqu’elle existe et d’exploiter les informations d’échanges économiques bilatéraux des MRIO pour estimer cette information lorsqu’elle n’existe pas. Un soin particulier est pris afin de faire correspondre les activités et les produits selon leurs géographies.Les outils qui découlent de ces travaux sont la première étape à l’évaluation des scénarios de la transition énergétique. En particulier, ils permettent de réaliser des inventaires de cycle de vie régionalisés pour évaluer les besoins et les impacts des technologies impliquées dans la transition énergétique. Cependant, des travaux supplémentaires sont nécessaires pour prendre en compte la dimension temporelle des scénarios de transition énergétique.Cette nouvelle méthode nécessite l’usage de nombreuses données de sources différentes. Afin de gérer ces données, une plateforme internet collaborative a été mise en place, qui permet de dissocier la gestion des données de leur usage. Une réflexion sur la gestion de la donnée a amené à penser de manière différente la structure des données relatives à l’écologie industrielle. Une nouvelle architecture sémantique, aussi appelée ontologie, a été développée pour faciliter la gestion des données, mais aussi leur maintient et leur évolution dans le temps, que ce soit pour un utilisateur unique, ou dans le cadre d’une gestion collaborative
The energy transition is a decisive issue of the XXIth century, particularly in relation to the reduction of the harmful consequences of the climatic changes. However, this transition is subjected to several hazards : economic, geologic, social, environmental and geopolitical ones. In order to evaluate the vulnerability and the conditions of feasibility of the energy transition scenarios it is necessary to be able to evaluate the supply chain of the technologies related to the energy system, in the technological and but also geographical dimensions.The current studies such as the life cycle assessments (LCA) allow to take into account the supply chain in the technological dimension, but these studies do not provide or only few information about the geographical dimension. At the opposite, the Input-Output Analysis (IOA), particularly the multiregional ones (MRIO) provide an information about the regional exchanges by categories of products, but are very aggregated. The nomenclatures of the economical activities and the categories of products taken into account are restricted. The works realized within this thesis aim to exploit the best of each tool, i.e. the technological information from the LCA and the geographical information from the MRIO. A new methodology is proposed to regionalize the LCA inventory with the MRIO data. This methodology allows to use the geographical information of the LCA data when it exists or otherwise use the geographical information from MRIO to estimate it. A particular attention is paid to get a realistic model, i.e. to match the activities and the products with real geographical data.The tools produced in this thesis are the first step to evaluate the energy transition scenarios. Particularly, they allow to realize regionalized LCA inventories to evaluate the needs and impacts of the technologies involved in the energy transition. However, additional works are necessary to take into account the temporal dimension of the energy transition scenarios.The new method needs to manipulate a lot of different data from different sources. In order to manage these data a new collaborative web platform has been set up. It allows to manipulate the data through a web interface as well as uses them in calculation frameworks. In order to facilitate the evolution of the tools and the manipulation of the data, a work about how to structure and manipulate the information was realized. A new semantic architecture — called computer ontology — has been developed to facilitate the management of the knowledges but also the maintenance and the integration of new knowledges. The collaborative framework can fit the specifications for a one person usage or a community

The diploma paper themed "Application of environmental product declaration of moulded plastic parts" concentrates on the area of optional instruments within the environment. The subject of the search is a life cycle assessment (LCA) applied to a plastic product supplied to the automotive industry. This method evaluates the impact of various phases of products on the environment, focusing on the phases of production of granulate, transportation and moulding of the product. Information regarding energetic and material inputs and outputs during previously mentioned phases of the product life cycle is essential. The LCA constitutes basis for a further optional instrument of the environmental policy, mainly to the environmental product declaration. This certificated declaration features the marketing instrument for the company and simultaneously shows the impact of the product on the environment and possibilities of improvement its environmental profile.

La normativa comunitaria ha favorito lo sviluppo di sistemi di qualità certificati. Oggi la CE sta guidando il sistema qualità verso un nuovo orizzonte: la valutazione delle prestazioni di sostenibilità di prodotti e organizzazioni, e lo sta facendo attraverso la metodologia dell'Impronta Ambientale (EF). A livello nazionale dal 2009 il Ministero dell'Ambiente sta promuovendo un intenso programma di valutazione delle prestazioni ambientali dei prodotti e di riduzione delle emissioni di gas serra delle imprese italiane. Una delle iniziative di maggior successo è il progetto VIVA "La Sostenibilità della vitivinicoltura in Italia". Con la pubblicazione del decreto Ministeriale n. 56 del marzo 2018 che approva lo schema volontario Made Green in Italy per l'applicazione della metodologia PEF in Italia, e con la pubblicazione del PEFCR per “Still and sparkling wine”. È chiaro che sia a livello nazionale che europeo la direzione intrapresa va verso la metodologia EF dalla Commissione Europea. Supponendo che il protocollo VIVA possa essere influenzato anche dall'evoluzione del metodo EF; sono state valutate le possibili implicazioni legate ad una futura transizione da VIVA alla PEF, effettuando anche uno studio PEF su 27 prodotti certificati VIVA con un confronto di prestazioni tra i prodotti VIVA e i benchmark europei.
EU regulations have favoured the development of certified quality schemes. Today the EC is driving the quality sector towards a new horizon; the evaluation of sustainability performance of product and organizations, and is doing it through the Environmental Footprint Methodology. At national level since 2009 the Italian Ministry for the Environment Land and Sea is promoting an intense programme for the evaluation of products’ environmental performances and for the reduction of Italian companies’ greenhouse gas emissions. One of the most successful initiative is the VIVA “Sustainability and Culture” project addressed to the wine sector. With the release of the IMELS decree n. 56 of march 2018 approving the Made Green in Italy Voluntary Scheme for PEF methodology application in Italy, and with the publication of the PEFCR for still and sparkling wine. Is clear that the direction taken at national and European level goes toward the EF methodology developed by the European Commission Assuming that the VIVA protocol may also be affected by EF evolution; possible implications linked to a future transition from VIVA to PEF were evaluated, also carrying out a PEF assessment of 27 VIVA certified products with a performance confrontation between the VIVA products and the European benchmarks.

L’agriculture urbaine représente une opportunité de réduire la pauvreté et d’améliorer la sécurité alimentaire des habitants des villes d’Afrique de l’Ouest. L’objectif général de cette thèse est de produire des données d’inventaire représentatives ainsi qu’une évaluation environnementale robuste de ces systèmes de production par la méthodologie Analyse du Cycle de Vie (ACV). Notre cas d’étude a été la tomate des jardins urbains au Bénin. Notre état de l’art nous a permis d’identifier que prendre en compte la diversité des systèmes de production et la variabilité des émissions au champ étaient deux enjeux majeurs de l’ACV des produits maraîchers. Nous avons donc développé un protocole de collecte de données basé sur la typologie qui prend en compte la diversité des systèmes puis mis au point une méthode d’estimation des flux d’azote au champ combinant un bilan d’azote et l’usage d’un modèle biophysique. Nous avons ainsi créé des inventaires pour 6 types de systèmes et une moyenne pondérée représentative de la population étudiée. L’analyse des performances agronomiques de ces systèmes a montré une forte variabilité des rendements et une utilisation fluctuante et souvent excessive d’engrais et de pesticides. L’exploration de la variabilité des flux d’azote à l’échelle de la parcelle et du cycle de culture a permis l’identification de 4 facteurs majeurs: les volumes d’eau d’irrigation, la dose d’azote, le pH du sol et la capacité au champ. A l’aide de scénarios favorables et défavorables aux émissions pour chacun de ces 4 facteurs, nous avons montré que leurs effets sur les résultats d’ACV étaient importants. L’intégration de ces données dans une ACV finalisée a montré qu’un hectare de production de tomate au Bénin était plus impactant que les productions maraichères Européennes. Les avantages du climat favorable du sud Bénin à la production de tomate en contre saison sont annulés par les faibles performances des systèmes d’irrigation, l’usage fréquent d’insecticides et d’importantes émissions azotées. Des données mesurées et des connaissances nouvelles sont nécessaires sur ces systèmes pour valider et affiner nos conclusions
Urban agriculture provides opportunities to reduce poverty and ensure food safety for cities inhabitants in West Africa. The general objective of this thesis is producing representative inventories and a robust environmental assessment for those production systems using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. Our case study was the tomato production in urban gardens in Benin. Our state of the art identified the integration of the diversity of systems and the variability of field emissions as two major challenges for the LCA of vegetable products. We therefore developed a typology-based protocol to collect cropping systems data that includes their diversity and an approach combining a nitrogen budget and the use of a biophysical model to estimate nitrogen field emissions. We created inventories for 6 cropping system types and one weighted mean representative for the urban tomato growers in Benin. The analysis of the agronomical performances of these systems highlighted the important yield variability and the variable and often excessive use of pesticides and fertilizers. The investigation of nitrogen fluxes variability at plot and crop cycle scales led to the identification of 4 major influencing factors: water use, nitrogen input, soil pH and field capacity. Using favorable and unfavorable scenarios for nitrogen emissions for each of these 4 factors, we demonstrated that the LCA results were sensitive to their variations. The implementation of LCA using those contrasted data showed that one hectare of tomato production in Benin was more impacting than European vegetable productions. The benefits from the favorable climate for producing out-of-season tomatoes were hampered by the low efficiency of irrigations systems, the frequent use of insecticides and large nitrogen emissions. Measured data and new knowledge on these systems are needed to validate and refine our conclusions

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CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior
Rubras Laminados Brasileiros Ltda
Com a crescente e efetiva preocupação com o meio ambiente, com o uso de recursos não renováveis, a gestão da reutilização e reciclagem e não por menos, da geração de resíduos, industriais, tem sido o interesse de pesquisas e projetos. O produto calçado utiliza em seu processo de fabricação diversos tipos de materiais e recursos. Assim, pode-se considerar o processo produtivo como uma interessante fonte de oportunidades do uso de ferramentas ambientais e estudos de caso para reduzir os impactos ambientais gerados por este processo produtivo. No entanto, os ganhos ambientais feitos na produção estão sendo ultrapassados pelo impacto negativo do aumento considerável na demanda por produtos de calçados refletindo em um aumento de resíduos. Para executar a avaliação ambiental e projeção de gestão dos resíduos do setor através da avaliação de ciclo de vida, este trabalho realizou um levantamento, mediante o mapeamento e quantificação de resíduos do setor para avaliar as oportunidades de gestão de resíduos A partir de um mapeamento e levantamento das indústrias situadas nas principais regiões calçadistas no estado do Rio Grande do Sul e seu processo de fabricação, com a aplicação de questionários, foi realizada uma pesquisa exploratória para a identificação e quantificação dos principais materiais utilizados e os resíduos gerados, assim como a sua destinação final. Com base em dados obtidos através deste levantamento, e também de uma análise por meio de uma desmontagem de modelos de calçados disponíveis no mercado para inventariar os materiais utilizados foi realizada a construção de inventário dos resíduos sólidos por meio de diagrama de blocos com as principais entradas, etapas e saídas do processo de fabricação. Para a realização da avaliação de inventário de ciclo de vida (AICV) considerou-se uma análise global do setor, em cenários genéricos de produção, considerando as informações obtidas dos questionários aplicados nas empresas, dos dados da análise dos calçados e dados da literatura. Como resultados da AICV, constatou-se que o processo de fabricação do calçado feminino confeccionado em couro resulta em desperdício de 28,6% de matéria-prima efabricação do calçado feminino confeccionado em sintético resulta em desperdício de 18,1% da matéria-prima têxtil.Posteriormente se realizou a AICV de forma a identificar e avaliar ambientalmente as oportunidades de gestão destes resíduos para o setor. A partir dos resultados obtidos foi possível observar oportunidades de gestão de resíduos através de algumas cooperativas do setor, a necessidade de enfatizar o gerenciamento no uso de matérias-primas a fim de minimizar os desperdícios e geração de resíduos, difundir a ideia de ecodesing para a fabricação de calçados a partir dos resíduos gerados, visto que já existem estudos e, também identificar produtos com esta tendência para além de evidenciar esforços realizados pelo setor em conjunto com seus fornecedores de modo a garantir o desempenho ambiental do calçado, o uso consciente dos recursos naturais e insumos. Os resultados mostraram também que a destinação dada aos resíduos sólidos industriais em maioria é reciclagem externa (86,67%), destinação para aterro industrial (33,33%) e também destinação para coprocessamento (26,67%).
Concerning the growing and effective worry for the environment with the use of non-renewable resources, the management of reusing and recycling, and not least, industrial waste generation has been the interest of research and projects. The footwear product uses in its manufacturing process several types of materials and natural resources, thus presenting as an interesting source of the use of environmental tools opportunities and case studies to reduce the environmental impacts generated by this production process. However, environmental gains achieved in production it has been overtaken by the negative impact of the considerable increase in footwear products demand for reflecting an increase of waste generation. To perform the environmental assessment and projection management of industry waste by evaluating lifecycle, this paper conducted a survey, by mapping and quantifying of industry waste to evaluate waste management opportunities. From a mapping and survey of industries located in the main footwear regions in the state of Rio Grande do Sul and its manufacturing process, there was the identification of the main materials used and waste generated, as well as its destination. From the data obtained from this survey, and also an analysis by a dismantling of shoe models available to inventory the materials used to build inventory was made of solid waste by means of block diagram with the main inputs, steps and outputs of the manufacturing process. To perform the evaluation of inventory life cycle (LCIA) considered a comprehensive analysis of the industry, in general scenarios of production, considering the information obtained from questionnaires applied in business, the analysis of data footwear and literature. As LCIA results, it was found that the female footwear manufacturing process made of leather results in waste of 28,6% of raw material and manufacturing the female shoe made of synthetic results in 18,1% of raw waste textile material. This data collection was used to build an inventory and to develop and LCIA, to identify and evaluate the environmental waste management opportunities for the footwear sector. As a result, it were observed the waste management opportunities through industry cooperatives, the need to emphasize the management in the raw materials use in order to minimize waste generation, to spread the idea of ecodesign for the manufacture of footwear to from the waste generated. There are studies and products using this trend promoting efforts with industry suppliers to ensure the environmental performance of footwear, the conscious use of natural resources and inputs. The results also show that the destination given to the industrial solid waste is most external recycling (86,67%), disposal to landfills (33,33%) and also destination for co-processing (26,67%).

The degradation of natural resources as a result of consumption to support the economic growth of humans society represents one of the greatest sustainability challenges. In order to allow economic growth to continue in a sustainable way, it has to be decoupled from the consumption and destruction of natural resources. This thesis focuses on an innovative manufacturing technology called additive manufacturing (AM) and its potential to become a more efficient and cleaner manufacturing alternative. The thesis also investigates the benefits of accessing the technology through the result-oriented Product-Service Systems (PSS) approach. The outcome of the study is the quantification of raw materials and energy consumption. The scope of study is the application of AM in the scale model kit industry. The methods used are the life cycle inventory study and the system dynamics modeling. The result shows that AM has higher efficiency in terms of raw material usage, however it also has higher energy consumption in comparison to the more traditional manufacturing techniques. The result-oriented PSS approach is shown to be able to reduce the amount of manufacturing equipment needed, thus reducing the energy and raw materials used to produce the equipment, but does not completely decouple economic growth from the consumption of natural resources.

Energy and environmental impacts are two factors that will influence urban region composition in the near future. One emerging issue is the effect on water usage resulting from changes in regional or urban transportation trends. With many regions experiencing stresses on water availability, transportation planners and users need to combine information on transportation-related water consumption for any region and assess potential impacts on local water resources from the expansion of alternative transportation modes. This thesis will focus on use-phase water consumption factors for multiple vehicle modes, energy and fuel pathways, roads, and vehicle infrastructure for a given transportation network. While there are studies examining life cycle impacts for energy generation and vehicle usage, few repeatable models exist for assessing overall water consumption across several transportation modes within urban regions. As such, the question is: is it possible to develop a traceable decision support model that combines and assesses water consumption from transportation modes and related mobility infrastructure for a given mobility network? Based on this, an object-oriented system model of transportation elements was developed using the Systems Modeling Language (SysML) and Model-Based Systems Engineering principles to compare water consumption across vehicle modes for assessing the resiliency of existing infrastructure and water resources. To demonstrate the intent of this model, daily network usage water consumption will be analyzed for current and alternative network scenarios projected by policies regarding the expansion of alternative energy. The model is expected to show variations in water consumption due to fluctuations in energy pathways, market shares, and driving conditions, from which the model should help determine the feasibility of expanding alterative vehicles and fuels in these networks. While spatially explicit data is limited compared to the national averages that are used as model inputs, the analytical framework within this model closely follows that of existing assessments and the reusable nature of SysML model elements allows for the future expansion of additional transportation modes and infrastructure as well as other environmental analyses.