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Accidental Emission
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Definition: An unintended environmental release.
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Allocation
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Definition: Partitioning the input or output flows of a unit process to the product of interest.
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Attributional Life Cycle Assessment
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Definition: An LCA that accounts for flows/impacts of pollutants, resources, and exchanges among processes within a chosen temporal window.
Acronym: Attributional LCA
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Background Data
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Definition: The background data include energy and materials that are delivered to the foreground system as aggregated data sets in which individual plants and operations are not identified.
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Brines (oilfield)
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Definition: Wastewater produced along with crude oil and natural gas from oilfield operations.
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By-Products
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Definition: An incidental product deriving from a manufacturing process or chemical reaction, and not the primary product or service being produced. A by-product can be useful and marketable, or it can have negative ecological consequences.
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Characterization
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Definition: Characterization is the second step of an impact assessment and characterizes the magnitude of the potential impacts of each inventory flow to its corresponding environmental impact.
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Characterization Factor
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Definition: Factor derived from a characterization model which is applied to convert the assigned LCI results to the common unit of the category indicator.
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Classification
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Definition: Classification if the first step of an impact assessment and is the process of assigning inventory outputs into specific environmental impact categories.
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Co-Product
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Definition: A product produced together with another product.
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Composite Data
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Definition: Data from multiple facilities performing the same operation that have been combined or averaged in some manner.
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Consequential Life Cycle Assessment
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Definition: An LCA that attempts to account for flows/impacts that are caused beyond the immediate system in response to a change to the system.
Acronym: Consequential LCA
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Environmental Aspects
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Definition: Elements of a business' products, actions, or activities that may interact with the environment.
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Environmental Loadings
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Definition: Releases of pollutants to the environment, such as atmospheric and waterborne emissions and solid wastes.
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Equivalency Factor
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Definition: An indicator of the potential of each chemical to impact the given environmental impact category in comparison to the referenced chemical used.
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Equivalent Usage Ratio
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Definition: A basis for comparing two or more products that fulfill the same function. For example, comparing two containers based on a set volume of beverage to be delivered to the customer.
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Facility-Specific Data
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Definition: Data from a particular operation within a given facility that are not combined in any way.
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Foreground Data
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Definition: Data from the foreground system that is the system of primary concern to the analyst.
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Fuel Processing and Delivery
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Definition: Activities involved in the processing and delivery of fuel used to run a process; also Precombustion Energy.
Acronym: Fuel P&D
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Functional Unit
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Definition: The unit of comparison that assures that the products being compared provide an equivalent level of function or service.
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Green Technology
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Definition: A technology that offers a more environmentally benign approach compared to an existing technology.
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Impact Assessment
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Definition: The assessment of the environmental consequences of energy and natural resource consumption and waste releases associated with an actual or proposed action.
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Impact Categories
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Definition: Classifications of human health and environmental effects caused by a product throughout its life cycle.
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Impact Indicators
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Definition: Impact indicators measure the potential for an impact to occur rather than directly quantifying the actual impact.
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Industrial System
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Definition: A collection of operations that together perform some defined function.
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Interpretation
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Definition: The evaluation of the results of the inventory analysis and impact assessment to reduce environmental releases and resource use with a clear understanding of the uncertainty and the assumptions used to generate the results.
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Inventory Analysis
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Definition: The identification and quantification of energy, resource usage, and environmental emissions for a particular product, process, or activity.
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Life Cycle Assessment
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Definition: A cradle-to-grave approach for assessing industrial systems that evaluates all stages of a product's life. It provides a comprehensive view of the environmental aspects of the product or process.
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Material Processing and Delivery
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Definition: Activities involved in the processing and delivery of materials to a process.
Acronym: Material P&D
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Normalization
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Definition: Normalization is a technique for changing impact indicator values with differing units into a common, unitless format by dividing the value(s) by a selected reference quantity. This process increases the comparability of data among various impact categories.
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Precombustion Energy
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Definition: The extraction, transportation, and processing of fuels used for power generation, including adjusting for inefficiencies in power generation and transmission losses.
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Product Life Cycle
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Definition: The life cycle of a product system begins with the acquisition of raw materials and includes bulk material processing, engineered materials production, manufacture and assembly, use, retirement, and disposal of residuals produced in each stage.
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Routine emissions
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Definition: Those releases that normally occur from a process, as opposed to accidental releases that proceed from abnormal process conditions.
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Sensitivity Analysis
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Definition: A systematic evaluation process for describing the effect of variations of inputs to a system on the output.
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Specific data
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Definition: Data that are characteristic of a particular subsystem, or process.
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Stressors
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Definition: A set of conditions that may lead to an environmental impact. For example, an increase in greenhouse gases may lead to global warming.
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System Flow Diagram
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Definition: A depiction of the inputs and outputs of a system and how they are connected.
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Weighting
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Definition: The act of assigning subjective, value-based weighting factors to the different impact categories based on their perceived importance or relevance.
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