 |
| Methods and Tools | Research Areas | CSS Home | Life Cycle Assessment | Life Cycle Design | Life Cycle Costing | Industrial Ecology | |
|
CSS organizes and leads interdisciplinary and collaborative research to support the design, assessment, and management of systems that meet societal needs in a more sustainable manner. |
Methods and Tools |
|
| | Return to Top | | |
CSS utilizes the tools and methodologies of life cycle assessment and design, industrial ecology approaches, and environmental performance and sustainability indicators in its research endeavors. |
|
|
|
Life Cycle Assessment |
|
| | Return to Top | | |
Life Cycle Assessment is an analytical tool to evaluate the environmental consequences of a product or activity holistically, across its entire life. CSS has adopted the International Organization of Standards (ISO) Life Cycle Assessment guidelines defined in 14040 series documents. Typically, energy and raw material requirements, atmospheric emissions, waterborne emissions, solid wastes, and other releases are mapped and inventoried over the entire life cycle of a product, package, process, material, or activity as shown in Figure 1. The impacts associated with these flows are evaluated. CSS has conducted assessments on product systems of varying complexity from milk and juice packaging to automotive transmission parts to larger more complex systems such as total vehicle and residential homes. |
|
|
|
Life Cycle Design |
|
| | Return to Top | | |
Life Cycle Design is a framework for integrating environmental considerations into product development by considering all stages of a product's life cycle, from raw materials acquisition through manufacturing and use to final disposal of wastes. Activities include identifying system requirements, selecting strategies for meeting these requirements, and evaluating tradeoffs among system alternatives. Successful environmental integration often must be achieved within the context of shortening time to market cycles, more stringent regulations, and global competitiveness. The objective of life cycle design is to enhance environmental performance across the life cycle while also optimizing functional performance, cost, and regulatory/policy requirements that influence the product system. Demonstration projects with industrial partners have targeted a wide range of products. Automotive products investigated includes oil filters (AlliedSignal), air intake manifolds (Ford), transmission parts (Ford), fuel tanks (GM), automotive film (3M), instrument panels (Chrysler, Ford, GM, and U.S. EPA Common Sense Initiative). Electronic products include business telephones (AT&T), flat panel displays (Optical Imaging Systems), photovoltaics (United Solar Systems Corporation); other systems studied include milk and juice packaging (Dow), residential homes, and water-based technologies for garment cleaning. Design analysis of these product systems highlights opportunities for improvement. |
|
|
|
Life Cycle Costing(LCC) |
|
| | Return to Top | | |
Life Cycle Costing(LCC) is a tool for evaluating all monetary costs associated with a system from acquisition, operation, maintenance, service and retirement. LCC addresses liabilities and hidden/less-tangible costs as well as externalities not accounted for in the current market system. |
|
|
|
Industrial Ecology |
|
| | Return to Top | | |
Industrial Ecology seeks to understand the interactions between industrial systems, ecological systems, and societal needs. Material and energy flows driven by human production and consumption are traced throughout the economy and their ecological consequences characterized. A more sustainable relationship between industrial and ecological systems is guided by conservation of non-renewable resources, pollution prevention, and intergenerational and intersocietal equity. Natural ecosystems are highly integrated webs of producers (who convert sunlight into food energy), consumers (including herbivores and carnivores) and decomposers (bacteria and fungi) that convert waste into nutrients. Natural ecosystems can serve as a model for industrial systems to better utilize renewable energy sources and eliminate waste through remanufacturing, reuse and recycling. |
|
|
|
| Last revised May 16 2001 |