Life Cycle Assessment of Steel Produced in an Italian Integrated Steel Mill

Abstract

Abstract:The purpose of this work is to carry out an accurate and extensive environmental analysis of the steel production occurring in in the largest integrated EU steel mill, located in the city of Taranto in southern Italy. The end goal is that of highlighting the steelworks' main hot spots and identifying potential options for environmental improvement. The development for such an analysis is based on a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of steel production with a cradle to casting plant gate approach that covers the stages from raw material extraction to solid steel slab production. The inventory results have highlighted the large solid waste production, especially in terms of slag, which could be reused in other industries as secondary raw materials. Other reuses, in accordance with the circular economy paradigm, could encompass the energy waste involved in the steelmaking process. The most burdening lifecycle phases are the ones linked to blast furnace and coke oven operations. Specifically, the impact categories are influenced by the energy consumption and also by the toxicity of the emissions associated with the lifecycle of steel production. A detailed analysis of the toxicity impacts indicates that LCA is still not perfectly suitable for toxicity assessments and should be coupled with other more site specific studies in order to understand such aspects fully. Overall, the results represent a first step to understanding the current levels of sustainability of the steelworks, which should be used as a starting point for the development both of pollution control measures and of symbiotic waste reutilization scenarios needed to maintain the competitiveness of the industrial plant.

Alternate Mid-Point Terrestrial Acidification Characterization Factors Considering Acid Strength

“…That is 100% of the environmental loadings are allocated to "coke+coke dust" and Pig iron, respectively. These assumptions mainly explain why the I j results in Table 2 in [15] are much different than in the present article, e.g. Acidification 1.34×10 7 mol protons in [15] and here the comparable 1.35×10 8 ( Table 8 column 2).…”

“…The new method for assessing midpoint TA is applied to a specific system of steel production processes in Italy [15].…”

“…Solely based on Renzulli et al [15] the following Tables 1-5 are derived. However, all input resources, emissions to water and soil, as well as and waste in [15] have been neglected for each unit process in Tables 1-5. Only gaseous emissions to air -of clear relevance for forming acids via hydrolysis or oxidations -are included.…”

Comparative “from Cradle to Gate” Life Cycle Assessments of Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA) Materials

“…Consequently, the values in every column always sum up to 100%. The advantage of presenting the LCA results in this way is that it permits to easily identify and analyze the stages that contribute the most to each environmental hazard or impact, as done by Renzulli et al [57]. …”

Evaluating the Link between Low Carbon Reductions Strategies and Its Performance in the Context of Climate Change: A Carbon Footprint of a Wood-Frame Residential Building in Quebec, Canada

“…The improvement of currently implemented technologies or investment should be made in newer innovative steelmaking approaches such the use of larger amounts of direct injected coal or the injection of other types of fuel into the blast furnace that may reduce by 50% the use of coke and by 30% the use of energy [49].…”