Life Cycle Analysis Flashcards
What components would you normally analyse?
Materials and products
What are we measuring, primarily?
Energy input and emissions output. (Normally in carbon). Encompassing the extraction and processing of raw materials; manufacturing, transportation and distribution; and use, reuse, maintenance, recycling and final disposal.
Name three lifecycles.
Cradle to Gate, Cradle to Grave, Cradle to Cradle.
What does the BRE Green Guide to Specification do?
Considers relative performance of products over 60-year design life cycle.
Can you name a Life Cycle assessment ISO?
ISO 14040: 2006
Cradle to Gate describes?
The impacts associated with products, materials or processes up to the point at which they are packaged and ready for delivery to site.
Cradle to Site describes?
The impacts associated with suppliers (raw materials), transportation to a manufacturing centre, manufacturing, packaging and transportation to site. In the case of construction impacts, this would also include any processing required on-site to make use of the product or component.
Cradle to Grave describes?
All the processes which a product or component goes through from raw material extraction to obsolescence and final disposal. It assumes no end‐of‐life residual value.
Cradle to Cradle decribes?
Similar to Cradle‐to‐Grave’, but assumes that an obsolete building, product or component has a residual value at the end of its first life and can be recycled.
Describe the Cradle‐to‐Cradle energy life cycle.
Embodied energy, operational energy and end‐of‐life energy.
Describe embodied energy, operational energy and end‐of‐life energy.
Embodied energy is the energy related to the construction of a building; operational energy is associated with the use of a building; and end‐of‐life energy is related to the disposal or recycling of a building.
How do we convert energy to carbon?
Carbon is a conversion of energy from megajoules to kilograms of CO2.
How do we obtain/calculate the embodied energy figures?
One method is to use the Inventory of Carbon and Energy (ICE), a University of Bath database.
Which lifecycle boundary does the ICE use?
Cradle to Gate is the most commonly used boundary because the others have too many variables.
What is the relationship between embodied energy and operational energy?
A higher embodied energy may reduce operational energy.
