## 2 Materials and Testing Methods
### LCA Analysis: Methodology and Input Data  
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a method for the evaluation of the products impact on the environment over the entire lifespan. The LCA method analyzes the resources extracted and quantifies the emissions related to a product [26]. It provides valuable information that allows managers to make decisions aimed at improving the environmental performance of their products. The methodology for the life cycle assessment analysis is given in the international standard ISO 14040-series [27,28]. LCA is organized in several steps:  
* the goal and scope definition;
* the inventory analysis;
* the impact assessment analysis;
* the interpretation phases. The collection of input data necessary for the calculation of the environmental impact is very important and it strongly influences the final result. Data could be taken from relevant studies, public databases of the employed LCA software, scientific publications, and from the companies information. Primary data, collected in the process chain of a product, are the most useful, allowing a more reliable evaluation. In the Life Cycle Inventory, data sources included foreground information, in which primary data were collected  
Figure 2: The Small Hot Box apparatus: a picture with a sample (**a**) installed inside; hot chamber (**b**); sample holder compartment (**c**); radiant shield of the heating system (**d**); thermoresistances and thermal flux meter probes (**e**). from the manufacturer of the panel and their components, background data, in which secondary data were taken from international Literature, and databases and tertiary data, from estimate models. The selected materials were chosen considering their really available amounts and in these cases where the manufacturing systems have a lot of scraps that could be used. All the considered wastes, cork, coffee chaff, rice husk, and granulated tires, can be used for other applications such as additives in road pavements, concrete, and so on, or in energy conversion systems. An LCA analysis taking into account all the possible uses of the wastes could be helpful in choosing the best recycling process, considering other functional units. Moreover, this paper would like to focus on their application as based materials for insulation panels and to compare them each other. In the present study, among the most important parameters, the cumulative energy demand (CED, MJ/kg), i.e., the energy consumed for the products manufacturing, and the global warming potential (GWP 100 years, kg of CO2 eq) were calculated as environmental impact indexes associated to the panel production. The global warming potential (GWP) quantifies the carbon footprint, basing on a relative scale which compares the specific Green House Gas (GHG) emissions with an equivalent mass of CO2, whose GWP is equal to 1. IPCC 100-years Global Warming Potential (GWP) characterization factors were applied to convert greenhouse gas emissions into carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2 eq) emissions; the characterization factors used were 1, 25, and 298 for carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide N2O, respectively. In particular the nitrogen oxides (NOx) are relevant to greenhouse effect, due to their catalytic role in the production of tropospheric ozone. In general, the global warming potential is estimated as 30-33 and 7-10 for the time horizons of 20 and 100 years, respectively, comparable to that of methane. Anthropogenic induced NOx emissions enhance greenhouse effect and stratospheric ozone depletion in the time scale of more than a century [29]. The LCA analysis was performed by using SimaPro 8 [30] and the functional unit (f.u.) was defined in compliance with ISO standards 14040 series [27,28]. Then 1 m\({}^{2}\) of manufactured panel was used as f.u., but another functional unit was considered, in order to assess the life cycle of the panel from thermal point of view and to perform the comparison with other waste recycled panels.