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Research
To understand the environmental performance of a product, its entire life cycle needs to be taken into consideration. A life cycle assessment (LCA) of a product looks at resources, energy and emissions, from the production stages of the materials used to make the product, to the product’s end-of-life stage, including recycling.
LCA is one of the tools increasingly being used to consider the environmental issues associated with the production, use, disposal, and recycling of products, including the materials from which they are made. An LCA is generally recognised to consist of four phases: the establishment of the goals and scope of the assessment, the drawing up of an inventory of the input of materials and energy and the output of emissions for each stage of the product life cycle, an assessment of the impact on the environment, and the identification of actions for improvement.
LCA is one of the tools increasingly being used to consider the environmental issues associated with the production, use, disposal, and recycling of products, including the materials from which they are made. An LCA is generally recognised to consist of four phases: the establishment of the goals and scope of the assessment, the drawing up of an inventory of the input of materials and energy and the output of emissions for each stage of the product life cycle, an assessment of the impact on the environment, and the identification of actions for improvement.
Although the techniques of life cycle assessment are still in a relatively early stage of development as a science, LCA can be used to identify priorities for improvements in process operations and product design and development.
There are various approaches to LCA (such as input-output LCA and hybrid LCA) and in general these are based on methods which describe stationary systems. More sophisticated methods are required when products are embedded in fast-changing environments (such as those found within the internet and electronic markets) and the ‘snapshot’ approach of stationary or quasi-stationary methods may not be suitable. The development of dynamic LCA (DLCA) is a key area of research at Xanfeon and involves descriptions of systems which are highly nonlinear and often far-from-equilibrium. Such systems may undergo spontaneous changes of state and so the DLCA needs to handle this, because the transformation of the system is part of the life-cycle.
LIFE CYCLE ANALYSIS (LCA)
This research focuses on techniques for analysing life cycles of goods, services, processes and organisations. Important tasks are the development of methods for evaluating life cycles within dynamic environments.
