Theory and application of Life cycle analysis (LCA), described in standards ISO 14040 to ISO 14049, has been presented. Furthermore, based on LCA which was applied to steel making company, study and application of Type III environmental declaration, described in standard ISO 14025, was implemented. Type III environmental declarations, in our case referred to as Environmental product declarations (EPD) quantify environmental information on the life cycle of a product to support comparisons between products performing the same function.
Initially, cradle to gate LCA study of austenitic stainless steel (EN 1.4301, AISI 304) in form of hot rolled coil was performed. Moreover, for the purpose of EPD, product category rules (PCR) for comparability purpose of EPD were selected. Finally, cradle to gate Environmental product declaration was created covering raw material supply, transport to manufacturer and manufacturing. Primary energy demand and resources are quantified separately as renewable and non-renewable. Environmental impacts were expressed in form of acidification potential, eutrophication potential, global warming potential and photochemical ozone creation potential. Within the EPD, data is presented by means of column chart with relative share of resources, energy, gate to gate, carbon steel scrap and transport. Additionally, contribution to impact of alloys is shown.
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