Page 145 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

3.4 Procurement, Origin and Quality of Data 129

The most important applications for the use of generic data are
1. Energy
a. Sources of fossil origin (natural gas, Diesel/light oil, fuel oil, gasoline, hard
coal, brown coal (lignite)) starting from deposits
b. Uranium ore starting from deposits, enrichment
c. Primary energy-mix for electricity generation and transmission
2. Transportation
a. Rail (electric, Diesel, mixed)
b. Truck (different sizes if necessary)
c. Passenger car
d. Ship (open sea vessel, river boat)
e. Air plane
f. Pipeline
3. Commodities
a. Metals (iron/steel, aluminium, copper, zinc, tin, … )
b. Plastics (low density polyethylene (LDPE), high density polyethylene
(HDPE), polystyrene (PS), PVC, polyethylene terephthalate (PET),
polyamide (PA), polyurethane (PU), … )
c. Building materials and – products (concrete, brick, insulating materials,
floor covering, roof covering, … )
d. Packaging materials (paper and cardboard, glass, plastics, metals, … )
4. Chemicals
a. Tensides and builders
b. Agrarian chemicals (pesticides, above all herbicides, fertilisers, … )
c. Large volume (base) chemicals such as sulphuric acid
d. Solvents
e. Plasticisers, for example, for PVC
Depending on financial funds, the references quoted in Sections 3.4.3.2 and 3.4.3.3
can be applied as sources for generic data.

3.4.3.2 Reports, Publications, Web Sites
The most well-known are:
BUWAL (Swiss Federal Office for Environment, Forest and Landscape) 138)
comprises inventories for packaging material (metals, plastics, glass, paper
cardboard) and energy (UCPTE). This data base conceptualised for LCA of
packagings have had an altogether big influence on the development of LCA.
The same is true for the data base Inventories for Energy Systems of ETH
Zurich (Chapter 1). An update of the BUWAL data has been accomplished 139)
by ecoinvent (see below) and is therefore no longer free of charge.

138) Now Federal Agency for Environment Protection, Berne (BAFU); BUWAL, 1991; BUWAL, 1996,
1998.
139) Roland Hischier at http://www.ecoinvent.org/fileadmin/documents/en/presentation˙papers/packag-
ing˙DF˙eng.pdf.