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D. Collado-Ruiz, H. Ostad Ahmad Ghorabi:
"Fuon theory: Standardizing Functional Units for Product Design";
Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 54 (2010), 683 - 691.

In order for products to be comparable in different Life Cycle Assessments, Functional Units need to be defined. Nevertheless, their definitions tend to be simplified or ambiguous. There is thus a need to standardize these Functional Units, to be properly used for environmental com-parison of the environmental performance of products. This paper introduces a systematic approach to define standardized functional units: the concept of fuons. Fuons are defined as an abstraction of a product, based on its essential function and representing the whole set of products that share the parameters for this function´s flows. The use of fuons, and by these means the correct definition of the Functional Unit, should then help to retrieve a suitable LCA-family, hence a set of products whose LCA shares a common behavior. This will allow comparing the environmental performance of a new product in development with the products in the LCP-family.

Life Cycle Assessment, Ecodesign, Functional Unit, Product Development, LCP-Family, Fuons, Design Domains

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2009.11.009