Inventory Analysis of Energy Consumption on Advanced Polymer-Based Composite Materials

@ Nowadays, manifestation of environmental consciousness is earnestly demanded even in the field of advanced materials and applying LCA (Life Cycle Assessment), which is a general method to assess environmental impact, on these materials is indispensable. Inventory analysis is a most essential and important process in LCA. In this paper, inventory analysis, especially about energy consumption, is carried out for CFRP (carbon fiber reinforced plastics) production process. After issues of applying LCA concept on CFRP are mentioned, inventory data of carbon fiber are shown. These are the first standard data in carbon fiber industries. In addition, pre-impregnation material (prepreg) production process is also considered. Finally, sensitivity analysis are applied. Sensitivity analysis is an effective method to evaluate uncertainty of inventory analysis. It is also useful to determine which process should be improved to reduces environmental impact. However, to use for discussing importance of each inventory data is also effective in the case of advanced materials such as CFRP. The importance of the data is used for determining which data should be revised and which data we can ignore or use substitute data. Based on formulation using partial differential, sensitivity analysis are carried out with low calculation-cost in high accuracy. Calculation examples for epoxy resin production process and prepreg production process are presented.