Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of Surface Treatment Products

Abstract

In this chapter, life cycle assessment (LCA) for surface treatment products is discussed from the view points of the outline of LCA, the history of LCA in the steel industry, and overview and issues in applying LCA to surface treatment. The LCA calculates the resource consumption and amount of generated waste during the life cycle of a product or service, and assesses the way in which this burdens or affects the environment. The results of LCA give us the amount of environmental burdens or affects in regards to services and products. Also it provides us with some decisions for lowering the environmental burden or affect caused by services and products. Applying LCA to surface treatment is expected to be a very complex and highly labor-intensive task, because LCA requires collecting and summarizing extremely reliable, but diverse, inventory data. Furthermore, inventory data would be open to the public in the LCA reports. However this means that some important data and private, technical know-how for services and products would be open too.