A Modular Tool to Support Data Management for LCA in Industry: Methodology, Application and Potentialities

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a very well written paper indeed that summarises a substantial body of work, and which makes a valuable contribution for using LCA to improve industrial processes. 

The combination of EPD terminology and well as GHG Protocol terminology is rare and useful.

A general nagging feeling (based on experience doing  environmental management in companies, and hence considering their perspective) is that while the tools are clearly well thought through, the outputs are still complicated to interpret.  Does the company definitely need such a detailed LCA perspective?  Or would annual static perspective be enough to make decisions that lower impacts?  Perhaps the case for needing an LCA perspective could be made a little clearer at prominent places (e.g. start and end), to help with this.  (Points are made, e.g. in the conclusions regarding the effect of secondary scrap.) 

The paper is long overall but it is well written, so as long as it is within journal guidelines then this is OK.

Comments on specific sections:

Abstract. Generall well written, but conclusions (ii) and (iii) are not phrased as conclusions (given the grammatical structure.  Rewrite these.

Line 419. Replace 'too high' with another word, such as 'excessive'.

Line 475.  Why is mass allocation used?  Why not use economic allocation to be consistent?  An explanation is needed. 

Line 765. 'the use of more impacting raw materials'.  How have you determined this?  You are using a static ecoinvent database, so you can't see changes over time in raw materials.  Presumably your point is about material switching (e.g. primary to secondary inputs).  In any case, please explain.

Author Response

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Best Regards

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper presents the potential advantages of automating the LCA generation in industry. Analysis is based on the Lighthouse project use case
3 research questions were answered

After reading this (long) paper I coundt find out the potential advantages of automating the LCA generation in industry.
Models presented for automating LCA generation in industry present same limitations as traditional/nowadays LCA studies (I mean, with no automatation): like availability of primary data and the assumptions on secondary datasets. (good) primary data and seondary data assumptions are the "base-line" of a good LCA study... 

Author Response

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Best Regards

The authors

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Reviewer 3 Report

This study proposes modular automated tools for high-resolution LCA and applies the framework to the Lighthouse project of a steel making plant. This study deals with an updated issue of LCA, i.e., temporal resolution, and conducts a lot of work in developing the models, as well as analyzing the results. However, there are a few fundamental problems of the paper, which should be addressed before publication. I therefore recommend a major revision.

 

Comments:

1. Abstract

The first sentence should be revised. It is true that data collection is time consuming, but it is not the reason for low-resolution LCA. A time-consuming data collection process can also lead to a high-resolution LCA. From this statement, it sounds like this study may develop a method to overcome the data collection problem, which however is not your study aim. Please carefully revise the first sentence.

 

“We argue that the automation of LCA generation, managed by a single tool, can overcome all these obstacles and…” Such an absolute statement may decrease the scientific credibility of the paper. How can a single tool solve all the obstacles of LCA, including low resolution, LCIA methods, environmental labels, LCA communication (as mentioned in the abstract)? The proposed tool may touch these issues in some extent; however, these problems are big issues in LCA, and each of them deserves a lot of studies. One single tool cannot solve all these problems. Please consider to revise the abstract. It is better to specify what problems are actually solved by your single tool? For example, if you mention it is LCIA methods, what aspects of LCIA can be improved by this study? The characterization, weighting, normalization, midpoint/endpoint approaches, or certain impact categories? The research gap should be clearly stated not in such a vague way.

 

The research aim is not mentioned in Abstract. Please add a clear statement of the study aim.

 

The statement of research methods in Abstract should be revised. The important information of methods is missing in Abstract. What is the single tool? Which method is used to develop the tool? What technology is used? These essential information about methods should be included in Abstract.

 

2. Introduction

The introduction should be rewritten. The flow of introduction is not clear. The introduction is too long, and the research gap is not clear. In the introduction, the authors should clearly state the research background, the research gap, and the study aim.  

I suggest the authors to rearrange the structure and split some detailed literature review to another section “Literature review”.

 

The paper misused the terms: “high-resolution LCA”, “dynamic LCA”, and “real-time LCA”. The three are not exchangeable. A “high-resolution” LCA can be an LCA with detailed geographical or temporal information. A dynamic LCA means the LCA results can be updated given new input dynamically. A “real-time” LCA refers to the LCA that can reflect the real-time impacts of a product. The authors should carefully revise the paper and make sure the terms are used correctly.

What does the “high-resolution” LCA mean in this paper? Is it appropriate to call an LCA that contains monthly data a high-resolution LCA? How about the geographical resolution? The definition of high-resolution LCA should be provided.

 

3. Methods and modeling

Section 2.2

It is not what data are exactly collected. Please consider to provide the collected data in this section. In Lines 436-438, it is mentioned the data are collected into a spreadsheet. It is better to show how did you process the data？What are the differences between the “high-resolution” data collection spreadsheet with a static data collection spreadsheet?

 

4. Results

Figure 3 and Line 614, why August is highest but April is lowest?

 

Figure 6 gives the dashboard. In fact, the dashboard just provides a line chart and a donut chart. What is the contribution of the dashboard? What is the difference between the proposed visualization method of dashboard with other analyses? Same question to Figure 7 and Figure 8. As the line charts, bar charts, donut, heat maps are very common in LCA studies, and the visualization is one of the three contributions of this study, however, there is no scientific contribution can be found in the dashboard part.

 

5. Conclusions

Conclusions should be improved by involving specific and important results. As there is a discussion section, the conclusion is too long. In conclusions, you should only involve those important finds and suggestions based on the results and discussion.

 

 

6.References

Please consider improving the following references:

1 United Nations. UN SDG: Goal 9.

41 index, E. Ecolabel index, 2021

53 ISO. Technical Committees, 2021.

65 iPoint-systems gmbh. Umberto LCA+, 2021.

 

Other comments:

The paper should be thoroughly improved in terms of the style. There are several sentences that are not in academic language. A few examples are provided below, but there are more throughout the paper.

Line 32 “Such evaluation makes then possible to manage…:

Line 455 “Each consumption or emission (Flow term in the above equation) must be divided by the production….”

Line 1069 “Our architecture has not still been validated and operatively linked with the data management system of the organization; indeed our analysis focused on historical data only.”

 

 

Author Response

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Best Regards

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

This article covers the automation of LCA for estimating the environmental impact. The overall article is well written and the inclusion of a case study enhance the credibility of the research.

Following are specific comments which should be addressed;

• It is not clear whether the proposed automated LCA architecture is based on the ERP system of the organization or this is an additional tool. It is recommended to describe the current ERP system (if any) in detail.
• What is meant by switching between LCA methods in lines 385-387. How EPD scheme is compared with GHG? Has all the possible relevant LCA methods reported in the article such as CFP and ILCD 2.0 midpoint? Include a section in which all the LCA methods should be compared and selected methods are justified.
• 1 should be mentioned in line 454. Check all the other equations should be properly indicated within the text.
• There is a need for an explanation of the EPD scheme and GHG protocol for Table 1. Further, how the information has been extracted, mention the source.
• In Figure 6, the dashboard is developed on excel or VB. If possible provide an online link or valid source of development such as coding. Is it based on an ERP system?
• Remove the equations and figures from supplementary material if already mentioned in the article.
• Dynamic LCA proposed in the article is valid for steel making only? What aspects should be considered to replicate the system from other production systems?

Author Response

Please see the attachment. 

Best Regards

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Huge review has been done. 
Paper does not discuss anymore the potential advantages of automating LCA generation in industry and title has also been changed

I still think that the paper is very long and a little confused, but a big efford has been done by authors to improve it.
I would recomend to change paper title again: A modular tool that could/maybe improve data management for LCA in industry

I would recomend to improve abstract 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper has been significantly improved. 

 

Only a few minor comments:

1. Please consider providing a list of abbreviations. This can improve the readability.
2. The dashboard is capable of presenting the temporal variation, the contributions from unitary impacts, comparison of different products, etc. However, at current stage (at least according to the paper), the manufacturing processes are not shown. In the future, the authors may provide a detailed process flow chart for the modular LCA model, so that the emissions from the unit processes (which can be detailed into facilities) can be given. This can be discussed in the future work.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf