Life Cycle Assessment in the minerals industry: Current practice, harmonization efforts, and potential improvement through the integration with process simulation

Segura-Salazar, Juliana; Lima, Francisco Mariano; Tavares, Luís Marcelo

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.05.318

Cited by 61 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 94 publications

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“…Mineral industries also provide significant economic benefits to the society, as is the case with gold 17 . Although 3R (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle) measures were proposed to improve sustainability 18 , developing a standard method to achieve balance between the environmental impacts and economic development is still a challenge. During the sustainability assessment process, the use of datasets is the most critical step.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life cycle impact assessment of metal production industries in Australia

Strezov

Zhou

Evans

2021

Sci Rep

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Metal production industries are associated with positive economic benefits, however their activities are significantly resource and energy intensive, contributing to emission of pollutants and greenhouse gases to the environment. The balance between the economic inputs and environmental footprint of the metal production industries determines their contribution to sustainability. This work provides environmental impact assessment of the production of aluminium, copper, gold, iron and steel, lead, nickel and zinc, and considers their contribution to the economy. The emissions of selected representative industries in Australia were sourced from public national emission inventories and used as input parameters in the openLCA software. ReCiPe midpoint and endpoint hierarchist impact assessment methods were used to investigate the environmental impacts of the selected industries. The results indicate that lead, followed by aluminium and nickel production had the largest environmental impacts. The work further revealed the specific emissions for better control for each industry taking into consideration their relative environmental and economic impacts. For instance, adoption of renewable energy sources would significantly decrease the greenhouse gas emissions and the associated environmental impacts of the copper, zinc, gold, and iron and steel production industries. Improvement of sustainability of the production of lead would require further control of trace metal emissions, while for aluminium and nickel production, improved control of emissions of particles and the acidic gases SO2 and NOx.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life cycle impact assessment of metal production industries in Australia

Strezov

Zhou

Evans

2021

Sci Rep

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“…A streamlined approach based on the LCA methodology was developed in order to estimate environmental indicators for each of the comminution routes considered (Figure 2). The proposed method (Figure 3) focuses on the operational phase of the life cycle of the mining project [34], assuming that it represents the greatest impact in the life cycle of a comminution process, on the basis of results from previous studies [35,36]. Thus, this approach corresponds to a streamlined, gate-to-gate life cycle inventory (LCI).…”

Section: Environmental Indicators Based On a Streamlined Life Cycle Assessment (Lca) Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Holistic Pre-Feasibility Study of Comminution Routes for a Brazilian Itabirite Ore

2021

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Comminution is an essential step in processing itabirite ores, given the need to liberate silica and other contaminants from the iron minerals for downstream concentration and then pellet feed production. In general, these ores in Brazil are not particularly hard to crush and grind, but both capital (CAPEx) and operating (OPEx) expenditures in this stage of preparation can be critical for the project, in particular due to uncertainties in iron ore prices. Several circuits have been designed and are in operation for this type of ore in Brazil; however, it is not yet clear which technologies are more cost-effective and in which configuration they should be applied. This work critically analyzes four comminution circuits for an undisclosed case study. For these circuits, CAPEx, OPEx, and some environmental sustainability indices, as well as qualitative technical criteria, were used in the comparisons. This work concludes that two of these process routes, especially those based on more energy-efficient technologies (and one of these still rarely explored even at bench-scale), have demonstrated to be very attractive from multiple standpoints.

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“…Various databases provide data for environmental impacts of metals processing (Althaus & Classen, 2005), however an aggregated form is often used to present LCI data (Ghodrat et al, 2017). Furthermore, a recent review investigating LCA studies in mining and metallurgical industry concludes that most of the studies use generic databases and average values available in LCA software (Segura-Salazar et al, 2019). Consequently, it is challenging to make effective comparison or take coproduction into account.…”

Section: Environmental Impact Categoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Consequently, it is challenging to make effective comparison or take coproduction into account. The synergistic advantage of process simulation and LCA help to generate more detailed LCI inventories and open the "black-box" of metallurgical processes (Segura-Salazar et al, 2019). In addition, geographic locations and country specific legislation will have an impact on the performance and optimization of metallurgical processes.…”

Section: Environmental Impact Categoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%