Page 112 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

108 5. Development and applicability of life cycle impact assessment methodologies

planning, and argument of the equipment implementation. There are several impact factors
of the analogy estimating method in the estimating process, which are condition, time, and
level of similarity and dissimilarity of the similar products. The mathematical model can be
expressed as:

0
C ¼ C n 1 n 2 n 3
0
where C is the cost of an LCC, C is the similar cost of an LCC, and n i (i ¼ 1, 2, 3) are similar
coefficients, respectively.
The analogy estimating method could be divided into two types. One of them is to estimate
roughly the cost of the similar equipment or the equipment to be built. The other is to estimate
roughly the costs among the similar cost equipment and the equipment to be built. In the final
stage of an LCC, the analogy estimating method will be widely used and shown full expres-
sion in similar application of data.

5.3.3.3 Engineering estimating method
In the engineering estimating method, the cost of each unit will be calculated first. Then the
sum of the costs above will be determined, which is the overall life cycle cost. Before the pro-
cess, the detailed parameters of system and the cost of equipment maintenance are needed
simply. The usage frequency is usually high in late problem. The mathematical model can
be shown as flows:

C ¼ C 1 + C 2 + C 3
where C is the life cycle cost and C i (i ¼ 1, 2, 3) are unit costs in different times, respectively.

5.4 The social assessment—S-LCA

5.4.1 Research status

The social life cycle assessment is a social impact evaluation tool, which is aimed at eval-
uating the social and sociometric impact of a product. It is the only way to evaluate the social
impact from the angle of the life cycle (Lehmann et al., 2013). The impact includes positive and
negative influence in the whole life cycle of the product (Benoıˆt et al., 2009). The whole life
cycle consists of mining, processing, manufacture, transport, use, recycling, maintenance,
and disposal. The S-LCA is another type of LCA, placing emphasis on the social aspect
(Kl€ opffer and Ciroth, 2011).
Compared to other social impact assessment methods, the biggest difference is the study of
the whole life cycle of a product. The directly positive or negative impacts on stakeholders are
included in the social impacts of an S-LCA. When scaling up, the indirect impact should
also be taken into consideration. These impacts are related to the behavior of enterprise,
the sociometric process, and the accumulation of social capital.
By analyzing the pertinent literatures, the research statuses of the S-LCA field are as
follows.