Life cycle assessment of nickel products

Abstract

Purpose To support the data requirements of stakeholders, the Nickel Institute (NI) conducted a global life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) to show, with indicators, the potential environmental impacts of the production of nickel and ferronickel from mine to refinery gate. A metal industry wide agreed approach on by-products and allocation was applied. Methods Nine companies, comprising 19 operations, contributed data, representing 52 % of global nickel metal production and 40 % of global ferronickel production. All relevant pyroand hydrometallurgical production routes were considered, across most major nickel-producing regions. Data from Russia, the biggest nickel-producing nation, was included; the Chinese industry did not participate. 2011 was chosen as reference year for data collection. The LCIA applied allocation of impacts of by-products using both economic and mass allocations. A sensitivity analysis was conducted to further understand the relevance and impact of the different allocation approaches. Results and discussion The primary extraction and refining steps are the main contributors to primary energy demand (PED) and global warming potential (GWP), contributing 60 and 70 % to the PED for the production of 1 kg class I nickel and 1 kg nickel in ferronickel, respectively, and over 55 % of the GWP for both nickel products. The PED for 1 kg class 1 nickel was calculated to be 147 MJ, whilst the PED for 1 kg nickel in ferronickel was calculated to be three times higher at 485 MJ. The main factors influencing energy demand in the metallurgical processes are ore grade and ore mineralogy. Sulphidic ore is less energy intensive to process than oxidic ore. Eighty-six percent of the production volume from class 1 nickel producers, in this study, is from sulphidic ore. All ferronickel was produced from oxidic ore. The LCIA results, including a sensitivity analysis of the impact of producers with higher and lower PED, reflect the influence of the production route on energy demand and on environmental impact categories. Conclusions Conformant to relevant ISO standards, and backed-up with a technical and critical review, this LCIA quantifies the environmental impacts associated with the production of the main nickel products. With this study, a sound background dataset for downstream users of nickel has been provided. The Nickel Institute aims to update their data in the coming years to reflect upon changes in technology, energy efficiency, and raw material input.

Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) Approach Used for Rare Earth Elements (REEs) from Monazite Material, Considering Uncertainty

“…As noted above, very often LCI required a lot of data [17,18] that are well correlated to the study context [40]. Data quality is discussed widely in literature [17,23,[40][41][42][43][44]. In [45] analyzed uncertainty in a comparative LCA of hand drying systems pointed that data collection is one of the limitations in their LCA analysis.…”

Preface

“…In addition to the harmonization paper of Santero and Hendry (2016), this Special Issue comprises results of product LCAs: lead batteries and architectural sheeting (Davidson et al 2016), nickel-containing stainless steel rebar (Mistry et al 2016a) and molybdenum-bearing advanced highstrength steels in the lightweighting of vehicles (Hardwick and Outteridge 2015); cradle to gate LCIs and impact assessments for manganese (Westfall et al 2016), primary aluminum (Nunez and Jones 2015), nickel (Mistry et al 2016b), and zinc (Van Genderen et al 2016); and explorations of specific indicators and issues: a perspective on LCA harmonization from the International Molybdenum Association (Greig and Carey 2015), an application of novel approaches to water scarcity footprint calculation for primary aluminum (Buxmann et al 2016), steel recyclability (Broadbent 2016) and the influence of durability and recycling on impacts of window frames (Carlisle and Friedlander 2016).…”

Aplicação da eletrodiálise para concentração de metais de uma solução sintética multicomponente de uma rota de processamento de minério limonítico visando a recuperação seletiva de cobalto.

“…Fatores como a temperatura, índice pluviométrico, relevo e vegetação influenciam o grau de intemperismo, o que explica a predominância dos depósitos lateríticos em regiões tropicais. Apesar de possuírem composições variáveis dependendo do grau 3 Intemperismo é o conjunto de processos mecânicos, químicos e biológicos que ocasionam a desintegração e a decomposição das rochas [30]. 4 Pervasivo é uma estrutura não discreta que ocorre em todas as partes da rocha [30].…”

“…Apesar destes minérios representarem 70 % das reservas mundiais de níquel, somente 45 % do metal produzido advém destes minérios [1,2]. Isto devido ao maior gasto energético na quebra das ligações químicas existentes nos lateríticos quando comparado com os minérios sulfetados [3,4]. Apesar do seu processamento ser mais complexo, os minérios lateríticos de níquel situam-se próximos à superfície terrestre, possuindo maiores teores de cobalto, que agrega valor ao seu processamento [5][6][7].…”

“…Além disso, a distribuição de níquel é dispersa ao longo da estrutura molecular das partículas dos minérios lateríticos, o que dificultaria sua concentração e o beneficiamento do minério antes das etapas de calcinação e fundição, empregadas na pirometalurgia [2,5,8]. Dessa forma, caso fossem processados por pirometalurgia, maiores volumes de minério laterítico teriam que ser processados para se obter a mesma quantidade de metal, produzindo mais rejeitos a serem tratados e descartados, e ocasionando maiores investimentos e custos de operação [2,3,5,8,9].…”