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The National Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) Database Project, initiated about three years ago, is intended to be a resource for peer reviewed, at no cost, publicly available, web served LCI information. The Vehicle Recycling Partnership (VRP) of USCAR co-initiated this project with the Athena Sustainable Materials Institute and has been working steadily to date on providing LCI modules for the database. Athena International now manages the project. The purposes of this presentation are two-fold: 1) to provide an overview of contributed VRP modules, and 2) to give a status report on the National LCI/DB Project as a whole. Who is participating and what they are providing are also discussed as is the scope of the project and a request for additional involvement in data module development.

A review has been conducted on nine published full vehicle life cycle inventory studies. Our analysis shows that all studies conclude that the vehicle operational stage is dominant regarding energy and associated emissions. For energy this ranges between 60-80% of the total burden, the magnitude of which is dependent on the efficiency of the powertrain. On the other hand, for burdens like solid waste, the material production stage of the life cycle is dominant. When life cycle burden results are decomposed into fixed and variable components per mile driven, it is found the variable energy and associated stoichiometric emission (CO2) results demonstrate the underlying physics of vehicle propulsion, i.e. they are dependent on vehicle weight and powertrain efficiency. On the other hand, the fixed component of energy and CO2 shows more apparent scatter, which can, nevertheless, be reconciled on the basis of vehicle material composition and vehicle lifetime drive distance.

The United States Automotive Materials Partnership Life Cycle Assessment Special Topics Group (USAMP/LCA) has conducted a Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) using a suitable set of metrics to benchmark the environmental (not cost) performance of a generic vehicle, namely, the 1995 Intrepid/Lumina/Taurus. This benchmark will serve as a basis of comparison for environmental performance estimates of new and future vehicles (e.g. PNGV). The participants were Chrysler Corporation, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, The Aluminum Association, The American Iron and Steel Institute, and the American Plastic Council. The study was strictly a life cycle inventory. The approach was to quantify all suitable material and energy inputs and outputs, including air, water, and solid wastes. The inventory covered the entire life cycle; from raw material extraction from the earth, to material production, parts manufacture, vehicle assembly, use, maintenance, recovery/recycling, and disposal.

The use of reinforced polymers, especially SMC (Sheet Molding Composite), in the design of automobile parts has grown significantly since their first use some 40 years ago. Forty million pounds of SMC was used in 1970 and a projected 200 million pounds are slated for use in the auto industry in 1995. In the past five to ten years, environmental pressures demanding the responsible recycling of all materials have increased. The SMC Automotive Alliance (SMCAA), a joint effort of SMC molders and their raw material suppliers, has been proactive in developing answers to this challenge. In the past five years, cooperative research and development programs with automotive OEMs and the recycling business sector have led to the commercialization of processes to recycle and reuse both post-industrial and eventually post-consumer SMC in new automotive applications.