A Product‐Level Approach to Historical Material Flow Analysis

Abstract

Keywords:end uses industrial ecology material cycles metals resource management substance flow analysis (SFA)Supplementary material is available on the JIE Web site SummaryStudies of material cycles, which have a solid history in biogeochemistry, include characterization of technological materials cycles that quantify the way in which materials move through the economy and environment of a region. One of the most important aspects of historical technological materials cycles is determining how much material goes into various uses over time and modeling its lifetime in each use. A material flow analysis methodology is presented by which a historical (i.e., 1975 to 2000) study of tungsten use in the United States was constructed. The approach utilized in this study is twofold: the traditional approach by which material going into end-use sectors is approximated (the "end-use sector model"), and a second approach by which end-use products are specifically addressed (the "finished product model"). By virtue of the latter method, a detailed historical account of a material's end uses was developed. This study shows that (1) both models present a detailed treatment of trade of finished products over time for a variety of highly disaggregated products, (2) the end-use sector model provides a method to combine quantitative and qualitative data about products in various sectors to estimate domestic production for a metal about which little is known in terms of its end uses, and (3) the finished product model produces detailed estimates of domestic production for a large number of highly disaggregated products.

Current and Foreseen Tungsten Production in Portugal, and the Need of Safeguarding the Access to Relevant Known Resources

“…In China, the largest world consumer (≈55% of the whole tungsten market), recycling rates of tungsten-based scrap do not exceed ≈10% [13,24], well below the global average value of 30% [3,25,26]. Furthermore, in many applications, tungsten recycling is very demanding, highly expensive, and sometimes impossible due to dispersion or dilution effects [3,[25][26][27][28]. There are some options for tungsten substitution in several applications but these result in losses of product performance and/or higher manufacturing costs [2,28].…”

Materials Use Across World Regions

“…The article by Harper (2008) has a methodological focus. The author presents two models, "the end use sector" model and "the finished product" model, which she has applied to study the historical tungsten cycle of the USA.…”

Product flow analysis using trade statistics and consumer survey data: a case study of mobile phones in Australia

“…While the above studies have focussed on specific metals, other MFA studies have emerged which focus on the flows of specific products. Oguchi et al (2008) analysed the circulation of major consumer durables in Japan, Harper (2008) analysed global flows of tungsten-containing products, and Chen and Graedel (2015b) estimated in-use stocks of 91 products in the United States.…”