Page 156 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

9 Life Cycle Inventory Analysis 141

Table 9.4 (continued)
Examples and notes
Consultants Person having long experience with conducting
similar studies
Industry representatives Person with broad overview of relevant industry
Public
Other LCA studies Academic literature, reports commissioned by
companies
LCI databases ecoinvent, LCAfood
LCI models PestLCI
Company CSR reports Mentioning of key environmental figures
Industry association reports and Volumes produced, average elementary flows
databases
Legal documents Details on best available technologies, regulatory
thresholds
National or supranational statistical Mixes of waste treatment, transport, energy, etc.
agencies
Consumer organisations Average life time of products
Data Online search Google, databases, websites
access Questionnaire Employees at commissioning company or
suppliers
Direct dialogue Physical visits to site, email or telephone contact
First-hand gathering by LCA Measurements at site with own equipment
practitioner
The points listed under each dimension are illustrative and not exhaustive

9.3.1 Very High and High Data Specificity

The data type to be prioritised is always complete unit processes, because these
form the basis of the LCI results. However, for very high and high data specificity,
complete site-specific unit processes often do not exist and therefore must be
constructed by the practitioner from single data points.
For very high specificity, these data points are directly measured input and
output flows, i.e. elementary flows from/to the ecosphere and other flows from/to
other processes in the technosphere. Ideally, elementary flow data should be
gathered in the physical unit matching the characterisation factors to be applied in
LCIA (usually ‘kg’) per specific reference flow of the unit process (usually the
primary product output). For a CO 2 emission (i.e. elementary flow) from an elec-
tricity generation process, this would mean an amount of kg CO 2 per kWh elec-
tricity produced. Often, a directly measured flow will not be available in this form,
but rather as a quantity per unit of time (e.g. kg per year). In this case, the flow
needs to be scaled to one unit of reference flow. Figure 9.6 shows an example of
how to do this in practice.