Environmental impact and life cycle assessment of heating and air conditioning systems, a simplified case study

During the design process of heating and air conditioning systems, the designer must analyse various factors in order to determine the best design options. Therefore, the environmental aspects of a product should be included in the analysis and selection of design options if an environmentally aware design is to be produced or selected. The comparison between three different heating systems was made with the Eco-indicator 95 method. The study included the environmental impact at the production phase of the system, because alternative production methods have different kinds of environmental burdens. The results showed that the three different concepts of heating systems with different construction materials varied the Eco-indicator value. For radiator heating system the Eco-indicator value is far superlative than for floor or fan coil convector heating system. Copper pipes and other copper parts contribute to the greatest environmental impact. Radiator heating Eco-indicator showed three times higher value for copper pipes than for the steel pipes despite smaller dimensions. The lowest values are obtained for floor heating systems. Reasonable values are obtained for fan coil units; analysis shows up, that heat exchanger contributes the main part of the value.