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Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has emerged as an analytical tool to provide environmental information on a product or process through its life cycle. The cost of conducting a comprehensive LCA can be prohibitive and so “streamlining” approaches have been tested by practitioners. However, the more simple the model, the less detail and resolution it has, and this may undermine the reasons for undertaking the study. LCA complexity should be matched to the need to address environmental concerns. Certain stages of the LCA methodology are not well developed, (eg impact and improvement assessments). To overcome these difficulties, a Design for Environment (DFE) method has been used alongside LCA to provide a process by which real improvements can be initiated.

LucasVarity, a major supplier to the automotive and aerospace industries, is in the process of developing an environmental design methodology (Design for Environment) to support its product introduction process. In this paper, a case study is used to examine the existing design process within one part of the company. Four design functions are identified, characterised and compared with the structures, methods and working practices of a company-specified product introduction process.

Fabric cleaning, like other human activities, results in impacts to the environment and poses other external costs to society. Cleaning and reuse of garments seems intuitively more environmentally sound than acquiring clothes for single wear and disposal provided that the costs of cleaning are less than purchasing new clothing. However, a more complex issue concerns the choice of cleaning method that would impose the lowest long term costs on society and is, thus, more sustainable. The textile cleaning industry in Canada and the USA has recently shown an interest in the application of aqueous or water-based cleaning methods, as a complement and partial replacement for the more traditional chemical ‘dry’ cleaning. Perchloroethylene (perc) is by far the most common chemical cleaning solvent used by commercial dry cleaning establishments throughout North America.

MAIN CONCLUSION - Banning the use of chlorine chemistry in the manufacture of only three of the major uses of chlorine (steel, Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) and Titanium Dioxide) would result in a requirement to landfill an additional 24.6 billion pounds of waste each year (4.2 billion pounds auto related), raise serious issues regarding recycling with regard to PVC substitutes and raise the cost of related parts by some $2.0 billion a year. In addition, the use of available substitutes for chlorine-based compounds would result in a serious degradation in the quality and performance of automobiles manufactured in North America. PROCESS - Essentially, the process consisted of a micro economic analysis of the impact on the cost and performance of a “representative” automobile manufactured in North America and the differential environmental impact arising from the use of “available” substitutes.

The automobile painting is a very energy and emission (solvents) intensive process step in the production of automobiles with regard to the small amount of paint applied to the car body. The awareness has risen that cleaner production technologies must substitute end-of-pipe control technologies. If these technologies strive for being a competitive option in corporate decision-making process, not only their environmental but also their technical and economical performance has to be on the same or better level compared to conventional technologies. The approach of Life-Cycle Engineering (LCE) by IKP and PE investigates technical, environmental and economical aspects of products and technologies to analyze weak points and optimization potentials as well as to support product and technology development. LCE methodology was applied to the comparison of 1K, 2K, waterborne and powder clear coat systems for automobile painting in a multi-client project.

Products and services cause different environmental problems during the different stages of their life cycle. The Life Cycle Assessment tool aims to identify possibilities to improve the environmental behavior of the systems under consideration. Herefor it is necessary to systematically collect and interpret material and energy flows for all relevant processes. The whole life cycle of a system has to be considered to prevent the neglecting or shift of possible important environmental aspects. These results have to be included in the overall decision making process. In the last years PE developed the Life Cycle Engineering approach, which consist of the dimensions LCA, Life Cycle Cost and TQM. In order to support designers, engineers and decision makers to make better informed decisions, it is necessary to perform LCA studies and economical assessments at a very early stage in product design.

In this work an LCA approach has been applied on an electric car prototype. In particular a city car was taken into account, because it presents several innovations for saving weight, in order to obtain more operating ranges. The study has calculated the energy consumption and the emissions for the production, use and recycling phases of the following components: space-frame in aluminium and RTM, magnesium alloy seat, SMC outer body parts, glasses, motor drive and Pb-gel batteries. The data for the Inventory were taken out from the databases for the raw materials extraction and from manufacturing sites for all the production steps. In the calculation the transports and the close-loop recycling were taken into account. The Use-phase was calculated with a simulation software, developed by Fiat Research Center. The analysis allowed to modelize the electrical car and to evaluate the main performances in according with the city cycle ECEELECT.

The ISO 14000 series of standards will include guidelines for product life-cycle assessment (LCA) that are intended to be applicable to all products, regardless of materials, production system, or end use. Practice in LCA, however, has lagged far behind theory. Existing methods are at best marginally applicable to high-technology manufactured products such as automobiles that can contain thousands of components made from hundreds of raw materials. Optimization of the environmental performance of such production systems cannot be reduced to simple measures of energy and material use. This paper identifies technical issues relevant to the development operational LCA methodologies for high-technology products and proposes a hierarchical approach that is consistent with the general principles of ISO 14000 but is tailored to the needs of LCA users within high-technology industries.

As a means of effectively incorporating the concept of “life cycle” for reducing the environmental impact of the automobile, we carried out a life cycle inventory study on a part-by-part basis. The targets of our study are the fuel tanks that are made of different materials and manufacturing processes. One is made of steel, and the other is made of plastic, both perform identical functions. Our evaluation study encompasses the period from the manufacturing of the main materials until the disposal of the tanks. The evaluation items consist of the amount of energy consumed and the emissions (of CO2, NOx, SOx, and PM) that are released into the atmosphere. The results show that the plastic tank poses a greater burden in terms of the amount of energy consumed and the CO2 and NOx emitted.

As the pool of existing non-renewable natural resources continues to shrink, it will be necessary for government and industrial leaders to achieve a workable strategy for the intelligent allocation of scarce resources. In this paper, a method of quantifying the environmental and resource impacts of product redesign is proposed. This new method utilizes Input Output Analysis coupled with the Markovian decision making into a single matrix-based tool. The benefit of a fully developed tool would be the ability to make informed pre-production decisions leading to optimum product and process designs with minimal environmental impact. This paper illustrates this technique with an example based upon real industry data and extrapolated effects.

The market acceptance of vehicles with compression ignition engines is dictated by many factors. The most important are: driving properties, total life cycle costs, noise emission, pollution emissions, availability of the fuel, service possibility, and country specific regulations. The availability of the suitable high tech components is also a dominating factor. The influencing factors depend also on the vehicle concept and vehicle application. The author describes the influencing factors for most vehicle applications: 1.) Ships 2.) Locomotives 3.) Heavy duty trucks 4.) Medium duty trucks 5.) Light duty trucks 6.) Utility vehicles 7.) Passenger cars The development trends for the future will very much depend on fuel availability, international harmonization of regulations, certification procedures, fuel taxation and standards for all world markets. According to the presented data, the author describes the present situation and presents his view for the future development.

Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) has been suggested as an effective means of providing strategic environmental information to enable more informed decision making. The process of how to conduct an LCIA has been the center of controversy as evidenced during the development of the draft international standard life cycle assessment principles and framework document (ISO 14040). For the past decade, successful methods have been employed in the field of human health and ecological risk assessment to predict chemical-related environmental impacts. This paper investigates areas of commonality between LCIA and risk assessment, and presents a conceptual framework suggesting how better integration of risk assessment might be achieved in the automotive industry's goal of reducing car fluff quantity and toxicity.

The European car manufacturers have combined their efforts and experience in the field of Life Cycle Assessment in a EUCAR working group. An overview on work program and status of project phase 1 and 2 is given. In particular, the efforts regarding end-of-life vehicle scenarios and key ‘in-use-phase’ parameters are addressed, e.g. real drive cycles and weight impacts on fuel consumption. In the field of impact assessment, available methodological approaches are evaluated from an automotive industries' point of view, targeting for a common position and prioritization.

The Institute for Polymer Testing and Polymer Science (IKP) is an independent institute of the University of Stuttgart. For approximately 8 years work is done on the field of Life Cycle Engineering. The first couple of years knowledge about the production of materials was collected within plenty industrial cooperation. Parallel to this a methodology for the Life Cycle Engineering approach and a software system (GaBi 1.0-2.0) were developed. Based on these information, projects for balancing single parts like bumpers, fender, air intake manifolds and oil filters followed by projects handling more complex parts or processes like several body in white, headlights, fuel tanks, green tire or coating processes were done to establish the methodology of Life Cycle Engineering as a tool for decision makers and weak point analysis. Parallel to this a methodology for an Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) for the system automobile was developed in cooperation with the Volkswagen AG in 1993.

A comprehensive total cost life cycle assessment should include estimates of liability costs to provide the best picture of the financial viability of investments, such as product or process changes and pollution prevention projects. Potential liability costs are by nature difficult to estimate and include a prediction (or probability estimate) of risk. Occupational safety liabilities resulting from injuries to workers have been evaluated for specific automotive industrial processes by worker occupations using an incidence and severity-of-incidence type approach. Potential safety risks to workers at varying levels of risk from low to high were determined, and the estimated economic costs resulting from those risks have been developed. These occupational safety liability cost estimates can be used for total cost accounting in life cycle management.

A comprehensive total life cycle cost assessment should include estimates of liability costs to provide the best picture of the financial viability of investments, such as product or process changes and pollution prevention projects. Potential liability costs are by nature difficult to estimate and include a prediction (or probability estimate) of risk. Occupational health liabilities resulting from illnesses to workers due to chemical exposure in specific automotive industrial processes have been evaluated using an incidence rate approach. Potential health risks to workers at varying levels of risk from low to high were determined, and the estimated economic costs resulting from those risks have been developed. These occupational health liability cost estimates can be used for total cost accounting in life cycle management.

Life Cycle Management (LCM) is a method for incorporating costs which have historically been considered indirect or overhead costs into a traditional cost analysis. It is a comparative, decision making tool, which combines the systems based thought process and environmental focus of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) with the cost evaluation process used in Activity Based Cost (ABC) accounting. However, unlike LCA, this type of analysis may be performed in a matter of weeks rather than months because the boundaries are drawn around the manufacturing facility and the disposal of the material or end product. This paper describes the stepwise approach used in performing a LCM study and also presents a case study of three engine oil filters.

Since paint sludge, one of the industrial wastes, is tacky and generated in a large volume in mass production vehicle painting shops, handling and disposal are very difficult. We have this time succeeded in recycling this sludge as lightweight filler of vinyl chloride plastisol for coating underfloor (popularly called as under-body coating material) through thermal setting, crushing and pulverization after making it completely detackified and dewatered with centrifuging.

The presentation evaluates the feasibility for life-cycle impact assessment to yield accurate, useful results for sound decision-making. The evaluation raises feasibility issues based on (1) inherent scale issues, e.g., spatial and temporal discontinuities, between LCA and most environmental processes; (2) disparities between LCA threshold and dose-response assumptions and actual environmental processes; (3) extensive use of value-based subjective judgment and opinion to create environmental categories, equivalency models, and scores; and (4) the current lack of systems to indicate whether real and relevant differences are identified. All of these issues limit or constrain the decisions that can be made solely from LCA.

The purpose of the workshop “How to Perform a Life Cycle Inventory” is to provide a practical tutorial for professionals who might do their own LCI or partial LCI. This tutorial uses the LCI methodological steps to describe the specific steps necessary to actually carry out the LCI. A case study of alternative antifreeze (engine coolant) product systems (ethylene glycol- and propylene glycol-based) is used as the basis for the workshop and involves the attendees as “hands-on” participants in the LCI.