LCA for Polymers and Composites

With the realty of climate change now upon us, more and more businesses in every sector are incorporating sustainability and social considerations into their long term goals to maintain competitive advantage.

This session is aimed at supporting the attendees in their future careers by raising awareness of the tools that are available for economic and environmental assessment, and also how they can be used to understand and reduce impacts and costs.

The course will comprise of a series of lectures on the methodological framework outlining life cycle assessment and how it can aid decision making during early stage design, these lectures will be supported with presented case studies from the transport and energy sector. In addition the attendees will also learn about cost modelling and its use within industry, how to structure cost models for their own applications and their extension to full life cycle costing. Visits are scheduled for the session which will follow the theme of a product lifecycle.

22-25, June, 2009 at the Ecole Polytechnique F�d�rale de Lausanne

Monday 22, June 2009

- Welcome and Introduction

- The methodological framework for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) (Methodology and regulatory context for Life Cycle Assessment, illustrated with practical examples)

- Industry visit (To be defined)

Tuesday 23, June 2009

- Applying LCA to composite and polymers : identifying the key issues of the Life Cycle of polymers

- LCA Case studies and applied exercises

- Industry visit

Wednesday 24, June 2009

- Sustainable polymers and composites (Biomass based composites and polymers)

- End of Life Management for Composites and polymers (Dismantling, recycling, incinerating, landfilling)

- Case studies: industrial and R&D examples for dismantling and recycling polymers

Thursday 25th, June 2009

- Technical cost modelling and its use with composites

- Key aspects of Cost model development

- Cost modelling exercise

- Laboratory visit

Location: Laboratory of Composite and Polymer Technology- Ecole Polytechnique F�d�rale de Lausanne

Maximum number of participants: 25

For more informations please contact: jerome.payet@epfl.ch