The production paths of industrial products are usually complex, leading to difficulties and a large workload when conducting traditional process-based life cycle assessment (P-LCA). Existing studies on reducing LCA workload have focused mainly on simplifying the process or combining LCA with correlation methods. For complex production paths that cannot be simplified or changed, the methods have weak generality. To fill in these research gaps, a process-based life cycle inventory (P-LCI) framework for complex production paths is proposed. P-LCI contains accurate classification and definition methods for input, output and unit processes, and an interconnection model for calculating process coefficients according to the complexity of the linkages among processes is proposed. Based on the proposed framework, a case study of the dual-phase automotive strip steel (DP) production process is performed. The results show that the production of 1 kg of DP steel consumes 0.679 kg of molten steel from a basic oxygen furnace plant and 0.557 kg from the another. Coke plants produce the largest carbon footprint (CF) per unit of coke, which is 0.889–1.231 kgCO2e/kg-coke. For the cradle-to-gate lifecycle of DP steels, the BFP has the largest CF at 0.614 kgCO2e/kg-DP, accounting for 26.32%. Through the proposed P-LCI framework, unit processes can be clearly defined, and the interconnection model can be used as the basis for environmental impact analysis. When the production path changes, the model can be flexibly adjusted, and the workload of repeated model construction can be reduced.
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