Ecoinvent launches new LCA data for unsaturated polyester, vinyl ester resins

With Ecoinvent’s (Zurich, Switzerland) recent Ecoinvent 3.11 database release, updated life cycle assessment (LCA) results are now becoming available from the Cefic UP/VE Sector Group (Brussel, Belgium) for most important unsaturated polyester (UP) and vinyl ester (VE) resins chemistries. With this information, fabricators and composites components users can now calculate the eco-footprint of their products (cradle-to-gate).

In the past year, a detailed life cycle inventory (LCI) study has been performed by Ernst & Young (EY) Technology Consulting, commissioned by five European resin manufacturers (AOC, Ineos Composites, Polynt, Scott Bader and SIR Industriale, all members of the Cefic UP/VE Sector Group). These resin manufacturers provided detailed information to EY for respective products on energy consumption, emissions and waste generation per production plant and per product chemistry (ortho, iso, DCPD, maleic, rPET and vinyl ester resins).

EY aggregated the data and sent average datasets per chemistry to Ecoinvent. Then Ecoinvent calculated the footprint and published details on all relevant output categories, including the commonly used CO₂ emissions (global warming potential or GWP) and resource usage (abiotic depletion potential, or ADP fossil). The calculation was conducted based on an representative average formulation as agreed by the manufacturers for each resin chemistry.

The GWP data for UP and VE resins from Ecoinvent 3.11 (graph above) are shown to be 2-8% lower than the equivalent values from Ecoinvent 3.10 (which is the combined effect of changes deriving from resin manufacturing and from raw material contributions). The GWP of resins based on rPET waste is 16% lower than the GWP average of ortho, DCPD, iso and maleic resins, indicative of the positive effect of using recycled raw materials on the eco-footprint of resin manufacturing.

“Composite part manufacturers want to use reliable information for calculating the eco-footprint of their products,” says Stefan Osterwind, chair of the Cefic UP/VE Group. “The new datasets are very representative for European manufacturing of UPR and EVER resins, and enable making these calculations with high level of confidence.”

According to Steven Brown, chairman of the Working Group Sustainability of the Cefic UP/VE Group, LCA calculations can be made with different software packages and by using multiple material databases, which may affect the calculation result. “We are convinced that this quality project that involved over nine months of intense work from five resin manufacturers will set the new standard in resin LCA data,” Brown concludes.