Page 236 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

234 11. A composite life cycle sustainability index for sustainability prioritization of industrial systems

(i.e., system boundaries) and other aspects need to be defined with the decisions conducted
for the E-LCA in order to obtain an overall consistent analysis.

11.3.2 Economic indicator from the LCC
For conducting life cycle costing of an industrial system, several ways, such as analogy
model, parametric model, and engineering cost model, can be employed, in which the costs
for investment, operation and maintenance, and feedstock are usually accounted into the total
cost. In addition, the recycling and disposing costs are also frequently integrated. Recently,
the cost from the environmental impact (like carbon emission cost) has been suggested as
worthy of consideration, as it is likely that emission and pollution of an industrial system will
be charged in the near future. As can be observed in Table 11.4, some typical items are sum-
marized, which could be selected and then combined for calculating the indicator of LCC. For
fully understanding the economic indicator from the LCC, the detailed description regarding
each categorized cost can be found in Table 11.4, while a well-established example regarding
the LCC performance of the hydrogen production system is offered below (Fig. 11.5).
As can be observed in Fig. 11.5, multiple stages are involved in the water electrolysis-based
hydrogen production system. Accordingly, several categorized costs should be accounted into
the total cost, including the capital cost (C C ), operating and maintenance cost (C O&M ), feedstock
cost (C F ), replacement cost (C R ), salvage value (C SV ), and carbon emission cost (C CE ).

TABLE 11.4 Typical items for calculating the LCC of an industrial system (Iba ´n ˜ez-For es et al., 2014; Li et al.,
2017; Wood and Hertwich, 2012; Ren et al., 2018).
Item (Unit) Description
Capital cost ($,¥, …) It refers to the fixed one-time cost of purchasing land, buildings, construction, and
equipment, which is the total cost of bringing the investigated system to a
commercially viable state
Operating & maintenance It refers to all the costs required in the operation or sales of the investigated system;
cost ($,¥, …) the costs of labor, laboratory services, utilities, administration, and all energy and
material flows are also included
Feedstock cost ($,¥, …) It refers to the cost of raw materials required by the system to produce or start
operation, which may be purchased, homemade, or commissioned external
processing
Salvage value ($,¥, …) It refers to the residual value of the dismantled or cleaned fixed assets in the system,
representing the part that can be reused or sold as useful materials, which can be
obtained from the resale or recycling of equipment after the dismantling of an
industrial system
Replacement value ($,¥, …) It refers to the amount of cash or cash equivalent required to pay for the same asset in
accordance with the current market conditions. In practice, replacement cost is
mostly used in the measurement of fixed assets
Emission cost ($,¥, …) It refers to the cost regarding the cost for environmental impacts of an industrial
system, such as the carbon emissions, eutrophication effect, acidification effect, and
winter smog effect. Among them, the cost of carbon emissions would be one of the
most important factors that need to be integrated into the LCC