How to conduct a life cycle assessment with only information about type, material, and weight?

Question

A specific issue I am facing pertains to the heat exchanger in the system. We have information indicating that this heat exchanger is a "plate heat exchanger" of type SS316L, with a weight of 148 kg. However, we still lack concrete data regarding the manufacturing process.

I would appreciate your guidance on how best to proceed in such cases, especially with a plate heat exchanger of type SS316L with a known weight. Are there established methods or tools that could assist me in estimating the environmental impacts in the absence of specific manufacturing data for this particular type of heat exchanger?

Answer 1

Hi, good question, you need to use a proxy then, i.e. a process that seems similar to the heat exchanger manufacturing process. And also check how import this process is for your system. If it is very important (proxy contributes a lot to the overall result), then spend more effort on the modeling. Good luck!

Comments

can you give me an example for the proxy of a plate heat exchanger ?