Study of Life Cycle Impact Assessment of Fuels

Life cycle impact assessment is one of the most important processes in life cycle assessment. According to the data obtained from the life cycle inventory analysis, impact to the environment of product can be obtained through ranking data such as consumption of material and energy and waste emission with qualitative and quantitative methods. In this paper, the classification, characterization and quantitative methods of impact assessment are discussed in details. Six impact indexes, such as energy usage, consumption of non - reproducible resource, health toxicity, potential aerosol, potential acid, and potential global warming, are proposed for fuels ' impact assessment. And six equivalent models are used to characterize the aforementioned indexes respectively. Furthermore, the case about the impact assessment of cassava - based ethanol and gasoline has been analyzed. This method of life cycle impact assessment can be used to assess all kinds of fuels and it has very important practical value.