A Review on life cycle assessment of phase change materials in buildings

Abstract

It is very important to carry out the environmental impact assessment of Phase Change Materials (PCM) when they are incorporated in building components through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and it is an extensively studied area. In this paper a literature review on the LCA for PCM incorporated building structures is presented to establish the extent of their environmental impacts. And also analyses whether the positive impacts of the operational phases outweigh the negative impacts from manufacturing and disposal phase of PCMs. The methodologies of LCA process according to the international standards and its application in impact assessment also discussed. From studies it has been found that they keep consistency in various stages and depend only on the scope and goal of the LCA processes. This study also suggests that PCMs are good Thermal Energy Storage (TES) components compared to conventional TES techniques.