An example of a building service LCA for a new hospital’s operating room

The paper deals with the environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of HVAC plants operating in an emergency ward of a major hospital building in North of Italy. The analysis was performed in order to evaluate the environmental impact of individual components such as heat generators, heat pumps, air handling units and distribution systems and their effects on the overall environmental balance of the HVAC system. When a component is utilized in a circuit for functional wards, LCA takes only into account of the fractional environmental damage to that particular ward. The assessment was made using the Dutch code SimaPro 5.0® in accordance to EcoIndicator 99 thus enabling quantification of the environmental damage due to different impacts. In this analysis the software uses a database built from past cases.