Comparative Study of LCIA, MFCA, and EPIP Tools for the Environmental Performance Evaluation in Industrial Processes

Abstract

This study aimed to compare the environmental performance measurement in industrial processes by three different tools, LCIA, MFCA, and EPIP. Thus, a case study of a planned furniture industrial process was carried out. Visits were made in the industrial process for observation and data collection. The functional unit defined was 1 month of production, and the boundary considered was the industrial process area. Data collection addressed the identification of Environmental Aspects (EA) and Cost Centers (CC), as well as quantitative information such as masses, energy, operating times, machine power, employee numbers, and costs. Subsequently, the Spearman’s Correlation Coefficient was used to analyze the sensitivity of the three tools. Thus, the most critical EAs were Mixed powder, and VOCs of drying for both EPIP, and LCIA. For the MFCA, the most critical CCs were Cyclone and Rolling mill. Through the Spearman’s Rank Correlation Coefficient, it was verified that EPIP showed influence of a larger number of input parameters. This was because the EPIP has a greater number of analysis variables, presenting greater comprehensiveness in the parameters of environmental performance. Then, the EPIP showed more robustness to evaluate environmental performance compared to other tools.