Northwestern University Center for Engineering Sustainability and Resilience
Life Cycle Assessment Workshop
Professor Jennifer B. Dunn
Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering and (by courtesy) Mechanical Engineering
Director, Center for Engineering Sustainability and Resilience
August 5-7, 2024
Evanston Illinois
Application Deadline: July 12th, 2024
Apply Here
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.
Preliminary Schedule
| Monday, August 5th | |
|---|---|
| 9:00 am | Life cycle assessment and sustainable 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 |
| Tuesday, August 6th | |
|---|---|
| 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 |
| Wednesday, August 7th | |
|---|---|
| 9:00 am | Careers in Life Cycle Analysis |
| 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
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.
“I left the LCA workshop feeling not only equipped to begin using LCA in my research, but excited about it. I'm grateful to have gained a fundamental understanding of LCA in its implementation and its utility in the span of three days. Would highly recommend attending!” (Participant feedback, 2022)
