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Some products contain a large number of components (made of various materials) that are assembled into a final product. The number of components can range from less than a dozen up to thousands. Conducting a complete LCI including all of the components may be prohibitively expensive, and not even possible because of the difficulty in obtaining data. A recent study concluded that a reliable methodology for streamlining, or screening, is to conduct approximate LCIs using a generic database. This paper reports on a case study of 10 hypothetical products assembled from fifteen materials using the FAL generic database to conduct a series of approximate LCIs. Once the LCIs are completed, a decision process begins. In this case study a methodology is illustrated that uses an LCI interpretation strategy to set thresholds for retention or exclusion of product components. The methodology uses a “streamlined impact assessment.” The implications of choosing various thresholds is illustrated.

Franklin Associates, Ltd. (FAL) is developing a methodology to deal with the issues of uncertainty and data quality in Life Cycle Inventories (LCI). In traditional LCIs, single point estimates of input variables (such as fuel requirements) are used to determine single point estimates for the output variables (such as total energy used or solid waste generated). These point estimates contain no information about the uncertainty of the data, and therefore give a false sense of precision. If LCIs are to become more widely used by decision makers and others, an acceptable method of dealing with uncertainty needs to be developed. This paper discusses the data uncertainty methodology being developed at Franklin Associates, and uses a previously completed case study as a real-world example of its use. The FAL methodology involves the assignment of data quality indicators to the variables used as inputs to our computer models.

The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) performed on ethylene glycol based antifreeze solution and propylene glycol based antifreeze solution shows that the energy required by the ethylene glycol based solution is less than the energy used by the propylene glycol based solution. The propylene glycol based solution generates greater total solid waste than the ethylene glycol based solution. The propylene glycol based antifreeze solution has a higher potential impact in more of the impact categories than the ethylene glycol based solution based on mass loading techniques for characterization. However, conclusions beyond using mass loading on a category-by-category basis cannot be determined.