August 9th-11th, 2022
The Center for Engineering Sustainability and Resilience (CESR) hosted a three-day workshop on Life Cycle Assessment in August 2022. The event brought together graduate students and early career researchers from 15 institutions, providing the foundation needed to apply life cycle assessment as part of their ongoing research.
Northwestern University Center for Engineering Sustainability and Resilience
Life Cycle Assessment Workshop
Professor Jennifer B. Dunn
Associate Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering and (by courtesy) Mechanical Engineering
Co-Director, Center for Engineering Sustainability and Resilience
August 9-11, 2022
Evanston Illinois
Description: This workshop will provide an overview of the fundamentals and applications of life cycle assessment. LCAs assess the total environmental impact of a material or process over the course of its existence, including the impacts of raw material extraction, processing, transportation, use, and end-of-life, including recycling. Subjects can then be directly assessed against each other for overall environmental impact, as well as relevant tradeoffs in assessment categories of particular interest.
Target audience: Graduate students (PhD, MS) in engineering and the sciences who envision applying LCA as part of their graduate research.
Objective: Participants will have the foundation needed to apply LCA as part of their graduate work.
Event Co-Sponsors
Agenda
Day 1: August 9, 2022
|
Time |
Topic |
|---|---|
|
9:00 AM |
Life cycle assessment and sustainability systems |
|
10:00 AM |
LCA foundations: Four phases, functional units, and system boundary |
|
12:00 PM |
Lunch |
|
1:00 PM |
Life Cycle Inventory Analysis: Mass and Energy Flows |
|
3:00 PM |
Two Foundational Systems: Electricity and Natural Gas |
Day 2: August 10, 2022
|
Time |
Topic |
|---|---|
|
9:00 AM |
Generating LCA results |
|
11:00 AM |
Multifunctionality, Co-Product Handling |
|
12:00 PM |
Lunch |
|
1:00 PM |
Multifunctionality continued |
|
2:00 PM |
Life Cycle Impact Assessment |
|
3:00 PM |
Life Cycle Interpretation |
Day 3: August 11, 2022
|
Time |
Topic |
|---|---|
|
9:00 AM |
Presentation: Career Path in LCA at a National Laboratory |
|
9:30 AM |
Review, Q&A |
|
10:00 AM |
Interpretation |
|
11:00 AM |
LCA tools and data sources, models |
|
12:00 PM |
Lunch |
|
1:00 PM |
LCA tools, data sources, models continued |
|
2:00 PM |
LCA is a family of models: environmental input-output, consequential, and social LCA overview |
|
3:00 PM |
Conclusion |
Questions?
Please reach out to engineeringsustainability@northwestern.edu for assistance