Methdology Research And Typical Paper Products Of Life Cycle Assessment

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA),as an effective environmental management tool, is becoming more and more important in order to achieve the sustainable development of the human society and has being aroused wide interests in the world. In view of the problem of LCA application in China, this paper carried out the research on the methodology and local inventory of LCA. Based on the research, The cases study of copy paper and newsprint were accomplished according to the requirement of the Typeâ…¢Environmental Declaration (typeâ…¢ED) and technology framework of ISO 14040.Electricity is a main consideration in almost all of the life cycle of the industry and product. The life cycle inventory of the thermal power in China in 2007 was studied and established in this paper. According to the statistic data of energy and power production of 2007 in China, with 1kWh being selected as function unit and the method of IPCC and the emission modes of relative pollutants being applied, the fuel consumption and the environmental emissions of the thermal power were obtained. In addition, the data were collected regarding of the thermal power production, the amount and proportion of fuel and technical parameters of the power plants. Then, the life cycle inventory of the seven grids in China was also obtained. Transportation also plays an important role in the various economic activities.The Environmental loads of transportation can not be neglected in product life cycle assessment. In this study,the road freight was chosen as the object of study, load 1 ton running 1 km was taken as the function unit, and the fundamental data of transportation in China were collected. Based on these data, the fossil fuel consumption and the air emission for function unit was calculated with the selected methods related to the oil consumption factor for 1 km and the emission factor of pollutants. Then, the life cycle inventory of the road freight of China was established, which included the oil consumption and the emission of CO₂, CO, NOx, HC, PM, NMVOC, CH4, SO2, N2O of four different types of truck.Finally, following the technology framework of ISO14040, this paper carried out the LCA analysis of the copy paper and newsprint using the software of KCL-ECO. The boundary of the copy paper study was from pulp production to primary franchiser and the boundary of newsprint study was from wastepaper transportation to newspaper bureau. Based on the investigation and survey, the inventories of the copy paper and newsprint were established, respectively. Related to 1000kg paper products, the environmental impacts of copy paper and newsprint were GWP 1767.45 kg CO₂-eq, AP 5.71 kg SO2-eq,NP 5.49 kg NO₃--eq,POPC 0.37 kg C₂H₄-eq for copy paper and GWP 1679.94 kg CO₂-eq, AP 12.33 kg SO2-eq, NP 13.30 kg NO₃--eq, POPC 0.59 kg C₂H₄-eq for newsprint respectively.