Life cycle analysis is a tool which estimates environmental indices (Eutrophication potential, acidification, global warming potential) of any input added to ecosystem.
Excel can work just as well - it may become a big and slightly unwieldy spreadsheet but you have at least total control over methodological choices
If the problem is a restricted budget to buy a LCA software, you can use the OpenLCA (http://www.openlca.org/). It is free.
Yes you can, but what is your objective means for what you want to do LCA for eg. Solid waste management options or green house gas emissions from MSW?
Manpreet I want to see the effects of different organic manures used in Maize-wheat cropping system in the terms of different environmental indicators.
You have to do many calculations and you can develop your own model but this is quite lengthy and tough process. There some online software are available, you can try them too.
I learned to do LCA in EASETECH (developed by DTU) and GaBi. Simapro and Arda are used in NTNU, where students have learned to do LCA in Excel with matrixes and. However, e.g. import from Ecoinvent as an LCI database will be necessary .
Good luck
@ Stefan and Katia
If we have our own database i.e. inputs used in crop production then is it necessary to use Ecoinvent or USDA database. If your answer is no, then how we can add that data to OpenLCA software.
yes, you can. See answers above. We have done LCAs long before there was any Commercial software.
LCA stands for Life Cycle Assessment, not Analysis. You should read the ISO Standards 14040 and 14044. There are also LCA text books available.
Hi Raman, to get answers about data set and/or database import, you can access the link for Sources of LCA Databases / OpenLCA Nexus (https://nexus.openlca.org/dataproviders). A review about free databases is also presented.
Yes, you should use of existing emission factors (in databases, literatures and related organizations) . That is exactly what these softwares can do.
You can quantify impacts from different ways. As said earlier ISO 14044 is the reference. You can find free soft and fee database (but mostly developed for European factors!). http://www.earthshift.com/Practical_LCA_Training_Lab
Analysis (or assessment) is an other story! That the interpretation of impacts or damages....the last, and not the lest, part of LCA. For that, there is not tools!
As mentioned above, it is very feasible to do LCA without LCA-specific software and it can be much more educational, informative, and rigorous if done well. The book referenced below is very useful for a full background of how to do the matrix algebra for computing everything you need for an LCA (and as stated in comments above, using Excel or MatLab to carry out the computations will be extremely helpful). Reading through the ISO standard also mentioned above is a good place to start, although it is rather general and won't help much in actually doing the computation.
Heijungs, R., S. Suh (2002) The Computational Structure of Life Cycle Assessment, Kluwar Academic Publishers: Dordrecht, The Netherlands
Finding data for all of your inputs/unit processes is much more difficult than actually carrying out the LCA. This is one of the very important things a software package would do for you....BUT, if you find all the data yourself, it is easier to rigorously confirm that all the data you input is truly applicable and complete for your purposes. Joyce Cooper at the University of Washington (my former advisor) has a short list of some places you can find data for inputting into an LCA. It may be worth taking a look at some of these sources:
http://faculty.washington.edu/cooperjs/DFE_Website/LCA_database_list.htm
Using Excel spreadsheets to create LCI is still state-of-the-practice. No commercial software needed, as folks previously indicated. For LCIA, I have imported spreadsheet data into the US EPA's TRACI model to calculate impacts. It's free and pretty easy to use (you just need to check the results to make sure everything is consistent (http://www.epa.gov/nrmrl/std/traci/traci.html). I am now starting to use openLCA.
Dear Raman,
Once you have the data available for the specific category you want to assess, you can do it with any type of software which makes basic calculations, you could even use your calculator. The tricky part is to get the data you might want to use and have extensive sets of this data integrated into a single software, that's why LCA-specific software was developed.
Regards,
Julio
@ Dear Julio Vargas
Thanks for your answer. I am having five years data set of different inputs (Labor, fertilizers, manures, diesel etc.) used in maize-wheat cropping system of Himalaya. Actually I am interested to see the effects of different fertility treatments on environment or LCA. I have calculated carbon foot prints by cool farm tool and by some referenced formulas.
Yes, software always use from some functions that you can calculate them with mathematical equations. you can find this equation in the manual of the software.
Yes, you can develop your own excel sheet based analysis. However, more detailed analysis may make it difficult to handle the data. Softwares helps in that and also these provide detailed and comprehensive dataset to use.
I agree with previous answers you can use an excel sheet, because environmental impacts are considered as linear. But in practice, it's easier to extract results from an LCA software with the impact method you want. If it's a money problem use openlca it's free and open source.
Hi
Sandeep Shrivastava , Niklas von der Assen
Can you please share a tutorial or a doc. to understand how to do excel based LCA. I intend to do an LCA for composting, recycling, etc for waste.
Thanks
Yes it can be done but you need to master the KgCO2 - equivalent calculation formulas
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