1.
LIFE CYCLE ANALYSIS USING
ECO-INDICATOR(ECO-it 99)
PRESENTATION BY:
SRIKANTH REDDY K
PRAKASH SHARMA
LEKHRAJ KUMAWAT

2.
CONTENTS
 INTRODUCTION
 RESOLVING MISSING INDICATORS
 AVAILABLE VERSIONS OF ECO-it
 STAGES OF ECO-it
 GUIDED TOUR to ECO-it
 CASE STUDY
 USES AND LIMITATIONS OF ECO-it
 PROS AND CONS OF ECO-it
 REFERENCES

3.
Introduction
 Eco-Indicator is a life cycle impact assessment tool developed by PRé Consultants B.V.
 Eco-Indicator helps designers to make an environmental assessment of a product by
calculating eco-indicator scores for materials and processes used.
 The Eco-Indicator is split into three sections:
 Production of raw materials (e.g. polystyrene), processing & manufacture (e.g. injection
moulding)
 Transportation of product (e.g. shipping), energy in use (e.g. electricity), consumables in
use (e.g. paper)
 Disposal

4.
Introduction:
 Problems faced by LCA practitioners include:
 LCA consists of many effects like GHG emissions, acidification and other effects but its
difficult to have overall impact since there is no mutual weighing between different
environmental effects.
 In general careful collection of all data in a product life cycle is complex and time
consuming. Usually LCA cannot be carried out in design process.
 ECO-INDICATOR resolves these problems as follows:
 The LCA method has been expanded to include weighing method to bring all effects under
one roof.
 This enables allocation of one single score which is called as eco-indicator point.
 The ECO-INDICATOR of a material or process is thus a number that indicates the
environmental impact based on data from life cycle inventory higher the indicator(points)
higher the environmental impact.

5.
RESOLVING MISSING INDICATORS
 If an indicator value for a material or a process is missing, this causes a problem that can be
resolved as follows:
 Check weather the missing indicator contributes significantly to the total environmental
impact.
 Omission of the material or process is admissible only if its share is likely to be less.
 Substitute a known indicator for the unknown one.
 If one goes through the list there exists relatively close material/process to the one missed
their ranges are very close. So, try substituting the most closest material for the missing
one.
 For example points/emissions for all the plastics are in the close range which gives an
opportunity for substitution in case particular material is not available.
 Consult an environmental expert to calculate new indicator value for the missing material.
Other software as an alternative for expert can also be used for this purpose.

6.
Available versions of ECO-it
 There are two versions of ECO-INDICATOR namely ECO-it 95 and ECO-it 99.
 ECO-it 99 is the new version.
 The main effects of the changes from 95 to 99 are as follows:
 In 99 resource depletion is included which gives higher value(points) for oil and gas
resources compared to that of 95 version.
 Land use is included in 99 which gives higher value(points) for agriculture production
processes.
 Dispersion and degradation of substances(materials) is included in 99 which mean that
materials/substances with short lifetime(which is embedded in the database) will have less
contribution to score/points.
 NOTE: Values/points/scores for a particular product evaluated based on 95 and 99 cannot
be compared due to inequality in score assignment .

7.
STAGES OF ECO-it
 The program structure is simple. There is a Main window with four pages:
 Life cycle page, allowing you to describe the product life cycle under investigation.
 Production page, where you can enter the hierarchical structure of the product, and
specify the materials and production processes per part. These materials and processes are
chosen from the Select a process dialog box. The database holds the points values and CO2
equivalents of material-, energy- and transport processes.
 Use page, where you can enter the energy and transport components. A unique feature is
the additional life cycle. This allows you to link a pre-defined product like packaging, with
its own life cycle, into the use phase.
 Disposal page, where you can specify the waste scenario for the product or for different
parts and materials

8.
GUIDED TOUR to ECO-it
Fields:
• By clicking on new file field in the
taskbar of Eco-it software one can open a
new project file
• The next symbol is to open the existing
project file of Eco-it.
• This window gives information about the
project such as name , date created, broad
description of project(if any) author etc.
• Database used is Eco-it 1.4 which is
given as default with the software.

9.
GUIDED TOUR-CHANGING THE SETTINGS
 The results can be shown as bar indicators or values by changing the settings in the view field.

10.
GUIDED TOUR-CHANGING INDICATORS


11.
GUIDED TOUR-ADDING PRODUCT AND PART
OF THE PRODUCT/SYSTEM
 As soon as the production tab is opened it shows the product. You can edit the name and quantity of the product
in the fields provided, here amount specifies the number of such products(overall score will be cumulative here).
 Part of product or system can be added by simply clicking on the add part field in taskbar. You can edit both
name and amount. Amount is useful to compute impact for multiple parts of same category in the system
suppose the there are 100 PV panels in the system enter inventory for one module and set amount of PV module
to 100.

12.
GUIDED TOUR-ENTERING PROCESS
 New process with in the part can be added by clicking the add process button in the taskbar. As soon as add
process button is clicked a window pops up, from that select the appropriate inventory/input and enter the
amount.

13.
GUIDED TOUR-CHANGING UNITS AND
ADDING EXTRA/NEW PART OF PRODUCT
 The default units are in accordance with the SI units, however the units can be changed as per requirement by
simply double clicking on the unit.
 If a new part of the system is to added after completing the all the processes of previous part, click on new part
button will give you an error as depicted as follows:

14.
GUIDED TOUR-ADDING EXTRA/NEW
PART(continued)
 In this case minimize the previous part and then add new part as shown below:
Minimize
A
D
D
1.New part can be named and assigned with amount
same as the previous part.
2.New processes for the new part can be added by
simply clicking the add process button.
3.Even though it looks like that new part is
mentioned under the previous part but it is actually
listed under the product.
4.Emissions of one part were added to the product
but not the previous part.

15.
GUIDED TOUR-VIEWING RESULTS
 The analysis/allocation of points is automatically done at the time of inventory, so extra simulation is required.
 The results can be seen in the form of pie chart or bar chart by clicking the chart field in the taskbar. This can be
done separately or combined for production and disposal stages.

16.
CASE STUDY-LCA OF PV SYSTEM


17.
SNAPSHOT OF LCI/LCA FOR PRODUCTION

18.
SNAPSHOT OF LCI/LCA FOR DISPOSAL
NOTE:
1.The allocation of percentages for
different fields like municipal,
household, recycling, incineration,
landfill are taken arbitrarily based on
preliminary knowledge.
2.Since the contribution of the
disposal emissions (0.016 ton CO2)
in the total emissions(5.6 ton CO2)
the assumptions may not prove
costly.

19.
CASE STUDY-RESULTS
Production Disposal

20.
CASE STUDY-RESULTS(cumulative)
Results conclude that majority of the emissions
from PV system were from the production part
and disposal part has negligible share in total
environmental emissions.

21.
Use and Limitations of ECO-it
 The ECO-it is intended for internal use for designer to choose best environmental friendly
design and process.
 The standard Eco-Indicator values are not intended to use for environmental marketing,
environmental labelling.
 These are also not intended as an instrument for government to be used for setting standards
and drawing up guidelines.
 So it can be used with in companies and sectors to give an outcome of environmental friendly
product.

22.
Pro’s and Con’s:
 Pro’s:
 Reasonably sufficient database for simple processes.
 Easy of computation
 Instant results
 Works well even very less amount of LCI is available
 Con’s:
 Chances of unavailability of indicators for some materials or processes.
 No indications for selection of projects.
 Inappropriate for large and complex systems

23.
REFERENCES
 1.ECO-Indicator user manual.
 2. Life Cycle Inventories and Life Cycle Assessments of Photovoltaic Systems, International Energy Agency
(IEA).

24.
THANK YOU