What is the step wise procedure for manual calculation of LCA for a specific plant based products.
The system boundary includes:
1. Ploughing
2. fertilizer and organic manure application
3.Irrigation
4. harvesting
5. transportation
6. Extraction of phytochemicals
7. Development of plant-based products--It has many steps
Hi, to perform a LCA you need to have a very deep understand on what you are willing to assess. The understanding will help you to use (or build) your "inventory" which will contain the data for your specific processes. The process should be known as well in order to access the right inventories correctly. i.e. is the transportation done by car, train, boat? (here, it will vary if we are talking about the goods used for production or the final product itself....) then once the relevant data are collected (according to a scope which is the starting point!) you will need to "weight" them accordingly (assessment) and them make you sensitivity analysis.... In summary, despite it could be done "manually" I will strongly recommend you to use a software... good luck!
There's nothing wrong in doing the calculations 'manually' in a spreadsheet.
Based on the functional unit and the reference flow, calculate the flow throughout the life cycle; multiply flow with emissions for each process; sum up — there you have the inventory.
The good students at TU Delft have made a LCA for Dummies: http://www.ecocostsvalue.com/EVR/img/LCA%20Guide-IO2070_1011.pdf
Good luck!
Pls refer the ISO 14044 (2002) Guidelines and refer a paper published by me on Tiles manufacturing, Rubber industry in Sri Lanka under my publications at Researchgate.
I agree with Henrikke, it is possible (and enriching) to perform an LCA in a spreadsheet.
If you however want to test a software, you can find free ones :
- http://www.openlca.org/
- https://brightwaylca.org/
Regards
I've been using openLCa. It's very good. Fairly easy. They respond to emails too if you have questions
Abdun Naqib Jimmy talking about open LCA, I have understood that this software works without any database, and if you want to do it you have to pay for it. Is this true? In the case, how much does ecoinvent cost?
Dear Ricardo,
OpenLCA is free. The databases are payable, unless you are from a non-oecd country. Then you can order ecoinvent for free. You can create your own databases, using the elementary flows etc. Please visit the openlca nexus download website, where you can see the price list of each download.
Hope it helps.
OpenLCA software is totally free. Some of readily available database from their website are ready to be downloaded. However, in case you need a more detailed database, you have to buy ecoinvent database. The ecoinvent database can be downloaded for free in non-OECD. For as long as you can provide the documents they are asking, you can download it with no problem. Like certification from a university (if you are working in academe).
Otherwise, you have to pay for the database. The price of the ecoinvent database also varies depending on the number of users (Single or multiple).
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