LCA module to simulation plattform

Purpose and goal

The purpose of the project has been to show companies and society that changing the settings on their crushing plant can affect the environmental impact of the production of rock materials. The goal was to develop a module for a simulation platform and implement it for a plant per company. In this module the environmental impact of the plant is simulated. Since the simulation keeps track of both what is produced and all machines, environmental impact can be allocated to each product through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This goal is achieved.

Expected results and effects

The result is that while simulating production (amount of material in different machine settings), it is possible to determine the environmental impact of production. The environmental impacts are diesel, electricity, GWP, EP and AP. The expected effect is that companies and their customers talk about, and perhaps even declare, their actual environmental impact of the different products. Earlier environmental declarations have been done for the entire plant every five years. Now there can be an updated calculation for each product. Companies and customers can compare facilities.

Planned approach and implementation

The project was divided into three parts; Mapping and selection of environmental parameters, modeling and implementation. The companies have been active, especially in the first part. Two workshops have been carried out with both production managers and environmental experts involved. After that, the models were created using data from the production plants, environmental reports and EPDs. The models have been implemented in the simulator and the results have been presented at the workshop. This has been a successful setup and the interest from the companies’ side has been big.